Watkins Glen Track Map Poster

Watkins Glen started on the streets. In 1948, the first road race held in America after the Second World War ran through this village at the southern tip of Seneca Lake, over and under the railroad tracks, with trains stopped and crowds lining the sidewalks. That 10.6 km (6.6-mile) course is now on the National Register of Historic Places, and anyone can still drive it, at much slower speeds.

In 1956 racing moved to a permanent circuit on a wooded hilltop southwest of town, laid out with engineering professors from nearby Cornell University. For twenty autumns, from 1961 to 1980, it hosted the world’s top Grand Prix cars, and fans flocked upstate every year among the changing leaves. In 1971 the lap gained a new section dropping into the woods: the Boot.

From the end of the Inner Loop to the Toe, the road falls 43 meters (141 ft), about thirteen stories, curling downhill through the trees before climbing back toward the line. The fastest part of the lap comes first: Turn 1, The 90, a right angle reached under braking downhill, opens the Esses, which climb at full speed to the long back straight. All around lie the vineyards and woods of the Finger Lakes, at what is often called the birthplace of American road racing.

The poster keeps every layer: eleven numbered turns; The 90, the Esses, the Inner and Outer Loops, the Chute and the Boot with its Toe and Heel lettered in; and, in muted lines, the old straight that bypassed the Inner Loop and the short course that skips the Boot. Blueprint, the drafting-room edition, suits a circuit laid out with engineers. And from up here, you can finally see why they called it the Boot.