When the harness horse was king of the track

In the first third of the 20th Century, harness racing was the leading spectator sport in the nation. In 1910, when Ty Cobb, the biggest star in baseball, was earning $5,000 a year, and playing before crowds of 3-5,000 spectators, Dan Patch was earning more than $1M for his owner and performing before crowds of 93,000. (Note: No need to feel sorry for Ty Cobb -- though he eventually earned some $50,000 per year in salary, Ty Cobb's salary was only spending money for that star. Early on, he became a large shareholder, and owner of several bottling plants, in the fledgling Coca Cola Co., and an early, large investor in General Motors. While he was never popular with his teammates, or even fans of his team, the Detroit Tigers, during his career, he would amass an estate in multi-millions of dollars, and leave a lasting legacies with the hospitals and health care facilities that he had established.)

Dan Patch (1896-1916), an Oxford, Indiana, bred horse, was sired by Joe Patchen, dam Zellica. He was named after his owner, Dan Messner and Joe Patchen.

Mr. Messner was a merchant in Oxford, and had never had any interest in horses until he was encouraged by a friend, Johnny Wattles, to get into the racing business, with Wattles serving as trainer, and driver. (Note: Dan Messner was the brother of Sam Messner, of Danbury, Nebraska. Sam, on several occasions, traveled to Indiana to be with his brother at Dan Patch races.)

At first, Mr. Messner was the object of ridicule -- people said that he had paid too much for Zellica and the colt, Dan, had been born with a crippled foot. They said he would never race. But with the aid of a creative blacksmith, Dan Patch was fitted with special horseshoes, and a specially designed sulky, with extra wide wheels, enabling Dan to become a real pacer.

As a 3-year-old, Dan Patch began his meteoric racing career. He was beating all comers at local fairs, and even at the Indiana State Fair. He was attracting attention from horsemen all over the East and Midwest -- to the extent that Dan Messner was afraid to keep his horse, fearing of foul play by shady, out-of-town horse players. In 1900, he accepted an offer from Manley Sturges, a well-known horseman from New York, of $20,000 for his pacer, which at the time was a record price for a pacer. Only two years later, Sturges sold Dan Patch to Marion Savage, of Minnesota, for $60,000. Savage was an entrepreneur, and manufacturer of animal feed supplements. Over the next years, Savage used the Dan Patch name to sell his supplements, but also licensed the name for products of all kinds -- sleds, coaster wagons, washing machines, chewing tobacco, automobiles (Dan Patch Car-price $525). There was even a Dan Patch electric train, which connected Minneapolis with several suburban localities.

Dan Patch seemed to capture the imagination of all America. Dwight Eisenhower remembered that he and his parents left in the wee hours of the morning to travel to the Kansas State Fair to see Dan Patch race late in the afternoon, and Harry Truman confessed that, as a boy, he wrote Dan Patch a fan letter.

In the early years of the last century, horse drawn vehicles were the principal means of transportation. Men took pride in their horses. Impromptu races were apt to take place on the back roads at any time, as neighbors tested their animals against proven winners. No surprise that men were intrigued by truly superior racing horses -- much like young men take pride in the technical advances of their "muscle cars," and make car racing so popular.

Dan Patch never lost a race, and after a time, Savage had difficulty finding races for his champion to enter -- other horsemen did not take kindly to pursuing second place. This, however, did not stop Mr. Savage. He began to have Dan Patch race against the clock, with the goal of setting a record, which he did some 44 times. Some of these records were quite imaginative -- half mile, mile, record mile pulling a wagon (vs. a sulky), mile using amateur driver, and various race track records all over the East Coast, Midwest, and as far as Denver. Dan Patch was very busy during the racing season, traveling to tracks in his private rail car.

In 1906 Dan Patch set a pacer record of 1 minute 55 seconds, at the Minnesota State Fair, a record that would stand for 40 years. Mr. Savage commemorated that record by renaming his farm, where Dan Patch spent his last years, to International 1.55 Stock Food Farm. Horse and owner had formed a strong bond over the years. When Dan Patch died, in 1916, Marlon Savage suffered a heart attack and died just one day after the death of his favorite horse. After almost 100 years, there are still Dan Patch Day Celebrations held annually in Indiana and Minnesota.

After the automobile came into widespread use, harness racing was relegated to a lesser place in American culture, but even up to World War II, harness racing was very popular in the Midwest and along the Eastern Seaboard, where it is still popular today.

In the 1920s and '30s the breeding and racing of fine harness racing horses was a very important industry in Red Willow County, Nebraska, largely due to the efforts on one man, Elmer Kay.

Kay was a good man for a community to have. The son of Z.L Kay, an early McCook doctor, Elmer had the distinction of being the first person to have gone entirely through the McCook school system, from first grade to graduation. Along the way, he was a halfback on McCook's first football team, and a member of McCook's first school orchestra. He was a long time Clerk of the District Court, U.S. Commissioner, and Clerk of the Federal District Court.

He was extremely active in many civic activities -- Chairman of the Sanity Board, Managing Secretary of the Chamber of Commerce, Chairman of the Red Willow County Republican Party, and Chairman of the Red Willow County Civil Defense team at the start of World War II.

In 1920, he became Secretary and Manager of the Red Willow County Fair Association, and was a member of the Nebraska Racing Association. Mr. Kay was instrumental in almost every aspect of Red Willow County Fair business -- the planning, building, and financing of every building on the fairgrounds -- he personally supervised the layout of the grounds and the racetrack, the premier attraction of the Red Willow County Fair in the '20s and '30s, with grandstand seating for 3,500.

Whether it was Kay's interest in horses that led to his work with the county fair, or the other way around, he spent the rest of his life promoting harness racing and the Red Willow County Fair. Two years after Elmer Kay took the helm of the county fair, the fair board, along with the McCook Elks' Club, put on a spectacular three-day race card, complete with pari-mutuel betting, which brought a number of "high rollers" from Omaha and Denver.

That event was said to have propelled harness horse racing to a popularity that would last through the 1930s. Among the local horses that ran at that meet were Paddy P., owned by A. Campbell, Curtis; Inclusive and Iokan, owned by John Harrison, Indianola; Billy Breeze, Delphleto, owned by Elmer Kay; and Vivandierre, owned by Elmer Kay and John Kelley, McCook. Harness racing had taken hold in Southwest Nebraska.

Elmer Kay's skill as a breeder and trainer of harness racing horses was well known throughout the Central U.S., and led to acclaim for McCook, as a harness racing center.

Kay's finest horse, Kent Bumpas, amassed a good many records at tracks throughout the Midwest. When Kent Bumpas died, he was buried inside the race track oval -- at the Red Willow County Fairgrounds. For many years there was a granite stone over the grave, with the name, age, and some of the track records the horse achieved -- a fitting tribute to an important, bygone era, that honored not only that magnificent horse, but also served as a tribute to his distinguished owner, Elmer Kay.

Source: Crazy Good, the True Story of Dan Patch by Chas. Leerhsen