Leo Seltzer was running dance marathons in Oregon when he noticed a magazine poll stating that 93 percent of Americans owned roller skates. He moved his promotional efforts to the Chicago Coliseum on South Wabash Avenue, opening the first Transcontinental Roller Derby on August 13, 1935. Twenty-five two-person teams entered the building to skate 4,000 miles around an oval wooden track, simulating a cross-country trek from New York to San Diego.
Early races lasted up to eleven hours a day for nearly a month. Competitors had to circle the banked track twenty-four times to complete a single mile, stopping only for mandatory rest periods on cots placed inside the infield. Exhausted skaters fell asleep while rolling, crashing into wooden guardrails and leaving deep splinters in the unpainted pine floorboards.
Sportswriter Damon Runyon watched a match in the late 1930s and told Seltzer that the audience only woke up when skaters collided. Seltzer rewrote the rulebook to formalize the violence, establishing five-skater teams consisting of blockers, pivots, and jammers. The new format turned the endurance race into a full-contact sport where jammers scored points by lapping members of the opposing pack.
Skaters maintained their own equipment before every heat. They stripped down hard maple wheels with wire brushes, tightened heavy truck bolts with pocket wrenches, and greased ball bearings with petroleum jelly. Men and women wore high-topped leather boots with reinforced toe caps, stitching torn canvas patches over the leather between periods to keep the boots rigid.
The women skated under the same rules and physical contact allowances as the men. Skaters like Gerry Murray and Marjorie Lawson drew thousands of paying spectators, regularly knocking opponents off the banked curves with open-hand shoves and legal hip checks. Referees used brass whistles to penalize illegal tripping, but skaters frequently ignored the calls to settle grudges directly on the infield grass.
Chicago newspapers covered the sport alongside Major League Baseball, running box scores and injury reports in morning editions. Medical teams at the Coliseum kept rolls of adhesive tape, smelling salts, and needle kits next to the team benches. Broken ribs, separated shoulders, and fractured collarbones occurred almost nightly as skaters hit speeds above thirty miles per hour on the timber track.
Seltzer courted local working-class crowds by offering discounted admission coupons through butcher shops, unions, and newspaper delivery routes. Thousands of delivery boys packed the upper balconies on designated promotional nights, cheering for local squads like the Chicago Westerners. The crowd threw rolled-up programs and coins at visiting skaters from New York who played the villainous heels.
Speed variations on the high-banked wooden turns created continuous hazards. If a pack slowed down to box in an opposing jammer, trailing skaters coming around the sixty-degree banking had nowhere to go except over the rails. Crashes frequently sent skaters tumbling headfirst into the press box or into the lap of spectators seated in ringside wooden chairs.
Penalized athletes sat in an open penalty box situated directly on the infield, separated from the track by a low pine barricade. Skaters spent two-minute penalties shouting profanities at the timekeepers or throwing wet towels at opponents circling the oval. When two fighters entered the penalty box together, fistfights often resumed behind the barrier while play continued on the track.
Rivalries between stars drove box office receipts. Midge "Toughie" Brasuhn joined the circuit in 1941, skating with a trademark snarl, a missing front tooth, and green eye shadow. Her physical battles against Gerry Murray packed arenas from Chicago to Madison Square Garden, with both women landing elbow strikes and forearm smashes to the chest while racing along the top rail.
Track officials struggled to enforce basic safety rules. Referees were struck by stray elbows, tripped by trailing skates, and pushed into the infield when trying to break up hair-pulling brawls between skaters. Seltzer required all skaters to carry basic medical insurance, but most competitors treated their own cuts with iodine and covered bruised knees with thick layers of sheepskin padding.
Behind the arena floor, both teams shared narrow basement locker rooms divided only by canvas curtains. Athletes taped each other's wrists and ankles with zinc oxide tape, applied red lipstick, and shared liniment bottles before the opening whistle. Once on the track, the cooperation vanished as players targeted previously injured shoulders and knees to force opponents off the roster.
In 1948, CBS began broadcasting matches from New York, and Seltzer established the National Roller Derby League with six permanent franchises. By late 1949, games moved permanently to television, drawing millions of viewers each week while the live touring circuit continued filling city armories across the country.
