The paper featured an 11-year-old competitor named Jeannie Tripp, who was in her third year of racing.
The Minneapolis Tribune covered Queen Anne Kiddieland races for drivers ranging in age from 6 to 14 in 1961.
Kid race cars, called “quarter midgets,” have been around since the 1930s. They go about one-quarter as fast as the smallest “midget” race cars for adults and drive on a short 1/20-mile oval track, according to a Car and Driver feature about the sport. (Today, the Minnesota Quarter Midget Racing Association hosts races on Sundays at Elko Speedway’s Little Elko track.)
A piece of Kiddieland in St. Paul
For a time, children also came to Queen Anne Kiddieland hoping to see one of their favorite TV characters.
Roger Awsumb, who played railroad engineer Casey Jones in the Channel 11 show “Lunch with Casey,” would drive the park’s miniature train, Bellefeuille said.
The miniature train at Kiddieland became a popular park fixture. (Bloomington Historical Society)
A St. Louis Park man named Dusty Sauter built the train, a ⅙ scale replica of a real Rock Island Line train called the Twin Star Rocket, in his garage, according to a St. Louis Park Historical Society account.
The little train ran in Powderhorn Park and other places before its stint at Queen Anne Kiddieland. After Sauter died in 1995, his estate donated the little train to the Minnesota Transportation Museum. It ended up at the Jackson Street Roundhouse in St. Paul.