A remnant of that time was unearthed briefly this summer by construction crews building the new football stadium at Lincoln High School.

In technical terms, they found "a hole in the ground with a void underneath," says project manager Mike Hiddleson. As excavation proceeded, they found a concrete tunnel that measured about 8 feet wide, 8 feet tall and 40 to 50 feet in length.

Buried for more than 60 years and now buried again, the tunnel is all that remains of the Garden City Velodrome.

Better known as the Burbank Velodrome because of its location, it was part of the last hurrah of bicycle track racing as a popular sport.

San Jose's first velodrome, a banked, oval track for bicycle racing, was built in 1892 at the corner of Race Street and Park Avenue.

Bicyclists were the prominent sports figures of the day, given copious coverage in the many newspapers of the day. Cyclists invested about $200 for a good racing bike and attire.

The cycling community numbered several hundred, and those with talent were often mentored and trained by older cyclists. There were also clubs, with members sharing an active social life in addition to racing.

Six velodromes were constructed in San Jose following the first one, but today only the one in Hellyer Park remains.

The best documentation on the Burbank Velodrome is in Tracy Ann Delphia's 1994 master's thesis on it, written for the department of human performance at San José State University.

Delphia's research included interviewing some of the well-known Burbank racers, including the late Joe Colla, a pharmacist and San Jose city councilman, and the late Murphy Sabatino, a community leader and businessman. While Sabatino didn't build the Burbank Velodrome, he did build a later one in 1950 at the San Jose Speedway.

Delphia also interviewed the late Clyde Arbuckle, San Jose city historian. Arbuckle was state champion in 1921, and when the Burbank Velodrome opened, he was the volunteer head referee there from its opening season in 1936 through 1939.

Now-retired SJSU librarian Bob McDermand, who also served on her thesis committee, helped Delphia in her research.

Records unearthed by the two showed that the Burbank was started with a Works Project Administration grant of $10,046, but the final cost was $25,000. The site, landbanked by the San Jose Unified School District for future use, was a spinach field at Wabash and Olive avenues.

It was an eighth of a mile oval, banked at about a 60-degree angle on the turns and a 30-degree angle on the straightaways. The grandstands had seating for 3,500.

A story in the San Jose Mercury Herald of 1935 says the Burbank was patterned after the track at Madison Square Garden, which then had the reputation as the fastest track in the world.

The actual track was made of 2-by-2-inch pine boards, constructed from the inner surface of the track outward. The surface was completely smooth, with no visible nailheads.

To keep the track in as good a condition as possible and to keep everyone but racers off it, the underground tunnel was constructed from outside the track into the infield.

When a workman hit the tunnel while excavating this summer, Hiddleson said he had an idea it was part of the old velodrome.

Ed Hodges, the College Park historian and retired science teacher at Hoover Middle School, had talked to Hiddleson earlier about the velodrome and given him a photo of it.

"The tunnel is right where it should be according to the photo," Hiddleson says.

Construction of the Burbank Velodrome coincided with the declining years of bicycle track racing as a popular sport. By 1940, the Burbank Velodrome was often referred to as the only active velodrome west of Chicago.

The 1941 season was the last for the Burbank. The school district had decided that location was the perfect site for Lincoln High School.

Many of the cyclists were then gone, fighting in World War II, and the public's interest in cycling seemed to decrease as it increased in other sports, particularly baseball, football and wrestling.

Along with the tunnel, excavation this summer at Lincoln unearthed some of the concrete piers that held up the track and grandstands.

"We pulled out all the concrete piers we could find and put in clean dirt and compacted it. We left the two sidewalls of the tunnel in place, as they don't pose any harm," Hiddleson says.

"Now it's 4 and 5 feet below the new football field. It's never going to show its head again."

Hodges is starting a drive, asking the city of San Jose to put a plaque in place, marking the location of the Burbank Velodrome.