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Talk of Arizona
Fall 2014
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Other major cities had similar tracks, but New York’s was best-known.
”It's likely that Kitt offered up the name of a New York City racetrack because horse racing already existed on this dirt road and to make Tucson sound more like a big city,” Leighton wrote.
“The” was eventually dropped from the Tucson street’s name.
In 1970, Speedway was featured in a photo essay on roadside blight in Life magazine.
The opening photo of the Life magazine spread showed Speedway as a barrage of business signs, billboards and bumper-to-bumper traffic. Tucsonans at the time claimed the photo was doctored.