The "The Sport Of Pigeon Racing" Story

It was an ordinary day.  Looking back over a few stories I have written in the past about the bird known as the pigeon.  

Cages at Root's Sale where my grandfather took me every Wednesday in the summer.

One story I wrote told about my Grandfather buying me a pigeon at a local farmer's market and auction while another story told of a man who happened to be in front of me in line at the local post office a year or two ago who was mailing a crate of fancy pigeons to Dubai.  Stories can be found by typing "pigeon" in the white box at the top left of this page.  Well, I was recently reading the "Cabbage Hill of Yesteryear" Facebook page and found a story written by Jim Gerhart titled "Pigeon Racing on Old Cabbage Hill."  The story, which was just posted a few days ago, told of the breeding, raising, training and racing of homing pigeons in the area of the city of Lancaster known as Cabbage Hill which is the South-West part of town, thus "SoWe".   Jim wrote of the first organized group of homing-pigeon owners in the city of Lancaster that was established in early 1889.  It was called the Lancaster Homing Pigeon Club and was made up of nine members who owned over 200 pigeons between them.  The following year the club had a few new members who lived in the Cabbage Hill section of town.

Three years after that, a second racing club known as the Hillside Homing Pigeon Club, which was formed on Cabbage Hill, began.  If you are not familiar with pigeon racing, it is a rather unusual sport in which club members ship their pigeons in crates to cities and towns far from Lancaster.  Most of the starting points were to the south, usually in Virginia or the Carolinas.  Each pigeon wold have a metal band around a leg which was inscribed with the owner's initials and an ID#.  At a designated time the pigeons would be released and attempt to find their way home to the "SoWe" section of Lancaster.  Homing pigeons have an acute sense of smell and an uncanny ability to use the Earth's magnetic field to find their way home to where they knew they would be fed and reunited with their mates.  Lancaster had an official judge who would record the exact time each pigeon would arrive at the door to its loft.  Amazingly, most made it back.

Winners in one of the races.

The judges would then compare the times and award valuable prizes to the owners of the pigeons.  Pigeon racing was an expensive hobby and the prize money was needed to continue with the sport.  At times, some of the pigeons wouldn't make it home during a race.  Especially if it was an extreme long distance or inclement weather.  Jim reported that during a storm in 1911, only 15 of 73 pigeons made it home to Lancaster within four days of being released in Newberry, South Carolina.  Some finally returned, but many were lost.  By 1908 there were three clubs in Lancaster, each with at least ten members and many hundred pigeons.  

1918 photo of a dispatch rider with a basket of pigeons to release.

Many members were from the Cabbage Hill area.  Jim wrote that the average age of the members was about 35 and all were tradesmen with some working in the cigar industry.  The majority of them were sons of German immigrants.  During WWI the club still competed, but the number began to dwindle.  Jim suggested that the members of German heritage wanted to avoid the spotlight during the intense anti-German sentiment directed at Cabbage Hill during the war.  In 1917 the Army asked club member Charles Schill to provide an inventory of all the homing pigeons in his clubs.  Seems there was a need for their service at the European war front.  The pigeons were expected to be "doing a bit as a patriot, to help our country in this great crisis."  Then in May of 1918, General Pershing directed 3,000 homing pigeons, perhaps some from Lancaster Cabbage Hill, and 100 trained handlers to be dispatched to the European front.  They were used to deliver messages to military headquarters miles behind the battle lines.  Their success rate was said to be about 97%.  After the war, Lancaster club members continued with their racing.  However, due to complaints of unsanitary conditions in backyard lofts, the city of Lancaster banned keeping pigeons within the city limits, thus ending more than 100 years of homing-pigeon racing in the city.  Many rural clubs still exist and a large network of racing enthusiasts still compete.  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.