Checkered Flag in Saugus : Historic Speedway Was Mecca for Hollywood

Before there were cars and auto racing at the Saugus Speedway, there were horses and rodeos.

And before that, the plot of land was immortalized as this country’s collective image of the Wild West, serving as the backdrop for many early Western films.

But some time between its motion picture beginnings and Wednesday’s announcement of the Speedway’s closing, that spot gave rise to a new community and a new way of life on the rougher edges of town. It helped create a Western version of suburbia.

“It was a Mecca,” said Santa Clarita historian Jerry Reynolds. “Today, there’s few people who remember what went on there, and the newcomers don’t much care. They’re busy fixing their roofs and getting their kids into Little League.”

Movie makers thought the site was a great location for Westerns. John Ford’s first feature, “Straight Shooting,” released in 1917, was made there in 1914, Reynolds said. John Wayne appeared in movies filmed there as well.

It became a live venue shortly after Roy Baker bought the 40-acre tract of land east of Bouquet Junction in 1923. He started construction of a rodeo arena a year later.

But it was Western star Hoot Gibson who made the place famous--first as a master of ceremonies and later, in 1930, when he bought it and changed its name to the Baker-Hoot Gibson Rodeo Arena. Gibson and his pal, Harry Carey, drew local folk and Hollywood stars to their rodeo and to their parties.

The exposure, historians say, began to build a town. Soon there were cafes and gas stations around the arena. Hollywood types--from actors to directors to stunt men--took up residence part time and year-round.

Long after John Wayne and John Ford shot movies on that spot, Clark Gable frequented the legendary parties there, Reynolds said.

Earl Warren, governor of California and later chief justice of the United States, attended events at the Saugus house, just as William Mulholland, the Los Angeles city engineer who brought Owens River water to the San Fernando Valley, had done before him.

After changing hands a few more times, the property was bought by William G. (Big Bill) Bonelli in 1937. He was a Los Angeles City Council member and state assemblyman who built the Santa Clarita Valley’s first housing tract, just off the side of the arena.

It was his heirs who decided to close the Speedway on Wednesday.

Auto racing came in 1939 with drivers such as Troy Ruttman and Bill Vukovich soon eclipsing the horses altogether.

The arena was shuttered during the war but reopened afterward for Circus Vargas, roundups, stock shows and midget auto racing.

In 1956, the dirt was paved over and the arena renamed the Saugus Speedway. A Sunday swap meet started in 1963 and came to rank among the biggest in the state.

Historian Reynolds said the beginning of the end came in the late 1980s, when the Bonellis bulldozed the historic ranch house. It had been boarded up for years, he said, and the family said it was dangerous.

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But racer Lance Hooper, the 1990 NASCAR rookie of the year and a 1991 champion, is testimony to the importance of the track’s more recent history.

His family goes back four decades at the track. Hooper’s uncle, Wayne, was a champion in the 1960s. His father, Ray Sr., won in the ‘70s. And his brother, Ray Jr., was a winner during the 1980s. Lance, 28, was the last of the Hoopers to race there.

“I was hoping to have a fifth-decade champion with my daughter,” Hooper said. “That won’t happen now.”

Times staff writer Shav Glick contributed to this story.