Four years in the making, Vintage Hydroplanes: People, Place, and Time traces the story of a sport, a town, a country, and a time. The sport is inboard hydroplane racing whose popularity exploded in the aftermath of World War II. The town is New Martinsville, West Virginia, which came to play an outsized role in the glory days of the sport in the 1950s and 60s. The country is, of course, the United States of America. The time is the arc of history stretching from the early days of the 20th century right up to the present.

Follow with us the interconnected, ascending arcs of all four of these topics in the post-war years, and see how declines in each of them paralleled one another in the last decades of the 20th century. Finally, explore the revival of those glory days with the emergence of the vintage hydroplane movement of the new century.

Along the way, you will meet some of the sport’s most prominent drivers, owners, and builders, names such as Sooey, Lauterbach, Taggert, and Byers. Also, you will meet the residents of New Martinsville whose lives were forever impacted by the New Martinsville Regatta which ran from 1939 to 1989 and has now returned to the banks of the Ohio River with the vintage hydroplane regattas.

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