Beverly Hills Speedway

Beverly Hills Speedway
(Los Angeles Speedway)

Location	Beverly Hills, California, United States
Coordinates	34°03′58″N 118°24′8″W / 34.06611°N 118.40222°W / 34.06611; -118.40222
Owner	Beverly Hills Speedway Association
Broke ground	1919
Opened	February 28, 1920
Closed	1924
Oval
Surface	Wood
Length	1.25 miles (2.01 km)
Turns	4
Banking	37°

The Beverly Hills Speedway (also called the Los Angeles Speedway) was a 1.25-mile (2.01 km) wooden board track for automobile racing in Beverly Hills, California. It was built in 1919 on 275 acres (1.11 km²) of land that includes the site of today's Beverly Wilshire Hotel, just outside the "Golden Triangle". The former site is bounded by Wilshire Boulevard, South Beverly Drive, Olympic Boulevard and Lasky Drive.^[1] The project was financed by a group of racers and businessmen that called itself the Beverly Hills Speedway Association. The track was the first in the United States to be designed with banked turns incorporating an engineering solution known as a spiral easement.

The Speedway operated for four years and attracted many historically significant competitors including Ralph DePalma, Jimmy Murphy, and Tommy Milton. It was also the site of a racing accident that killed National Champion (posthumous) and Indianapolis 500 winner Gaston Chevrolet in 1920.

Because of rapidly increasing real estate values, the Speedway became an uneconomical use of property. The track was torn down and the Association moved its racing operation a few miles away to Culver City, California in 1924.