Harry Harkness
American racing driver (1880-1919)
Harry Stephen Harkness (July 17, 1880 – January 23, 1919) was an American racing driver, aviator, and playboy.
Early life
Harkness was born in Kansas on July 17, 1880 to Standard Oil heir Lamon V. Harkness.
Auto racing
Harkness was an avid race car driver, and won the first Mount Washington Hillclimb Auto Race. One of his more famous races was against Henry Ford. Harkness led a group of investors who bought the Sheepshead Bay Race Track, a thoroughbred horse racing facility they converted to use as an auto racing track. Following Harkness' unexpected death the facility was sold to real estate developers.
As a noted racer of the day, Harkness was retroactively awarded a 1902 American Automobile Association National Championship in 1951 by revisionist sportswriter Russ Catlin. 1902 was the first year the AAA Contest Board sanctioned racing. During a visit to Paris that year Harkness encountered young Austrian-born Joe Jagersberger, convincing Jagersberger to emigrate to the United States in pursuit of a racing career.
Aviation
Harkness financed the building of many early airplanes.
“Harry Harkness” enters the record as american racing driver (1880-1919). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Harry, Harkness and American can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5669502. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1880, 1919, 1902 and 1951.
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This entry incorporates text from “Harry Harkness” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.