Bandimere, now and then

https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=26669182192764616&set=a.486840984758761

they are breaking ground on an 1/8th mile drag strip in Callahan Florida (on the Georgia border), and it's expected to be operating by May 2026

 https://www.actionnewsjax.com/news/local/step-closer-reality-callahan-speedway-breaks-ground-dragstrip/2R6AXFPZDFAK5CJ2JSV7MCFLUM/

The International Hot Rod Association has officially completed the acquisition of Memphis International Raceway and Memphis Motorsports Park

https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=1445233474311708&set=pcb.1445234410978281

the County Circuit Court Judge has ordered operations of Sloan Onondaga Dragway to cease immediately, the neighbor Rebecca Lindsey, complained enough. I'm guessing, that the track was there before she was

In the lawsuit, Lindsey contends the track is a nuisance because of the amount of noise and vibrations it generates. Aquilina agreed. 

 This is not the first nuisance lawsuit the 1/8 mile drag strip has faced.

In January, Ingham County Circuit Court Judge ruled against township residents Mark and Susan Cooper.

In that case, the couple argued the dragway violated Onondaga Township ordinances. The Judge found otherwise and declined to issue an injunction in a written decision issued Feb. 3, 2025.

Residents sued the former owners in 2013, claiming the dragway was a nuisance. After a lengthy trial, Jamo ruled the dragway was a nuisance. The Michigan Court of Appeals upheld that decision. That case was officially closed in 2020, a year before Woody Sloan purchased the dragway.

Sloan argues in court documents and a signed affidavit that he has changed the property to minimize the sound. He argues a 6-foot tall soil berm addressed the noise concerns by nearby residents by reducing the noise coming from the track.

He also argues that his reduction in raced days also minimized the noise in comparison to the previous owners.

https://www.wlns.com/news/onondaga-dragway-shut-down

Eagle Field, the WW2 airstrip, and recent annual dragstrip, was sold by it's owner Joe Davis because his health was failing. It's been bought by a flying car company CEO

 the drag racing moved to Mendota Raceway Park. The new owner asked for too much money, the drag racing organizers talked to the new owner, but said he wouldn't come to terms with the racers. 

https://www.fresnobee.com/news/local/article302241979.html

It's really cool to see a back window full of drag strip decals! ( I'm pretty sure this is a 55 Chev )

 https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=432141416243744&set=p.432141416243744&type=3

The Tennessee State Library and Archives have photos from Bristol Dragway back in the black and white photography days, here's the link

I'll guess they can't pull a crowd like this for an NHRA event unless they bring back these exact race cars, at the same admission price, and the same price of refreshments, as this June 1969 photo

https://tnsos.org/tsla/imagesearch/index.php?find=festivals&page=26

the end of an era, drag racing in So Cal is over. The end of legal, publicly accessible, quarter-mile drag racing now that the Auto Club Dragway follows the others that fell before it; Ontario Motor Speedway, Riverside International Raceway, and Fontana Drag City

Pomona, home of the NHRA will still host the Winternationals, but the track is not open for regular drag racing events.

that Houston Raceway Park will be closing permanently, and Atlanta Dragway, which has been hosting professional drag racing since 1975, has also been sold to developers.

https://www.thegentlemanracer.com/2021/12/auto-club-dragway-to-close-permanently.html

the christmas tree, is that in a gas pump enclosure?

https://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/threads/vintage-shots-from-days-gone-by-part-2.1154030/page-421#post-13477030

How did a drag racing location get to be known as a "Drag Strip"

CJ Hart did a lot to organize street racers into racing on an old airstrip in Santa Ana in 1950, and called it a Drag Strip.

https://www.hotrod.com/articles/carl-swift-irwindale-raceways-mr-unbeatable-1960s/#016-swift-profile-robison-1956-cadillac-jpg

Never take your eyes off anything pointing the business end your way, with the safetys off. Murphy's Law will get you every time

https://www.facebook.com/groups/253239161526236/permalink/1219354478248028/

the US Marines built the Woodburn drag strip from the old Woodburn Airfield in 1958. It opened in June 1961 as an ⅛-mile dragstrip

in Oregon, rodders started Woodburn Drag Strip with men and machines donated by a pictured USMC unit practicing airstrip construction.

In late 1958, the Multnomah Hot Rod Council (produced the first annual Portland Roadster Show in 1956) bought the old West Woodburn Airport strip from the Northwest Timing Association for about $4,000. Even so, the building of the strip was a joint venture between the two groups.

Considerable work had been done prior to the groups selling "stock" early 1959 to raise funds for the paving of the strip. Each "stock" certificate was sold for $1 and granted the purchaser two free admissions to the forthcoming races.

 Initial plans called for it to be a 1/8th-mile strip, paved 60 feet wide by 2000 feet long. It was twelve miles north of Salem. The Multnomah Hot Rod Council and the Northwest Timing Association conducted NHRA-sanctioned races for the first time beginning on June 4, 1961, running gas only, on the Woodburn Dragstrip. About 2,000 spectators turned out to see 75 cars compete.

https://dragstriplist.com/oregon


Dee Wescott was born in Portland Oregon August, 13, 1927. While in grade school the family lost everything in the depression and moved to the Damascus Oregon area where family could help out.

Dee bought his first car in 1939, when he was twelve years old. It was a Model T Ford pickup which, he said, he soon began to modify, rebuilding the motor in his bedroom. A few years later he was racing a Model T roadster through the orchards of Damascus. Dodging trees was a little rough on the cars, so Dee started a backyard repair shop with a homemade wooden hoist, a humble beginning for his future rod-building career.

Dee enlisted in the Navy on graduating high school, while 17. Dee was selected for advanced avionics training and became a radio and radar technician, and served two carrier tours in 1946-1947.

After discharge Dee entered vocational school for both auto mechanics and auto body repair, while working part time for an upholstery shop. In 1953 Dee went into business as “Wescotts Auto Restyling”. The new business specialized in “hot rodding” and “customization” of cars, along with body and fender repair and painting.

By 1953, Dee was involved with the Motor Sports Association which held races at the Jantzen Beach raceway. When a fellow driver was badly burned Dee took on the promoters insisting that they provide and maintain adequate firefighting equipment to prevent further tragedy.

Having proved himself as a leader, Dee was the natural spokesman for the rodders. When the clubs organized the Multnomah Hot Rod Council in 1954, Dee became the first president.

The first order of business was to move the races off of city streets, so the council negotiated for permission to race on idle airstrips until a permanent racing facility could be found. In 1958, the council purchased the Woodburn Drag Strip, and the races became more official.

https://www.hotrod.com/articles/0901rc-dee-wescott-passed-away/
http://oregonhotrod.com/events.htm

The Marines and Sea Bees made airstrips all over the south Pacific... during WW2, I suppose it makes sense that DOD leadership probably felt it was a good idea to keep them adept at doing so after WW2, and keep the equipment in use

https://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USMC/I/USMC-I-VI-4.html


The military used Catalina island for training during World War II. “A lot of the roads, the infrastructure, was built by the Army Corps back in the ’40s"

This spring, a new concrete runway built by Marines will finish upgrades to Catalina island's airport. Why? Why isn't the Wrigley family, who own's 90% of the island through a "land conservancy" aka legal protection from anyone else doing any construction or development, which means they are about the only beneficiary of the airport, and the 4000 residents... and if you're living on the only island off the California coast, you're not less than rich and well off.

Well, rich people get and stay that way by figuring out how to hang onto money, and spend someone else's money. So, when someone heard of the military reserves getting green lit to be used to do construction as a "military readiness and training" through the Defense Department’s “Innovative Readiness Training” program, they went for it, and now the old, asphalt runway on the island some 50 miles west of Camp Pendleton, used only by privately owned, and chartered jets of the very wealthy, will benefit from the discovery of this military loophole. 

The airport sees about 7,500 landings annually.


I say loophole, as you're probably aware, you can't get the military involved in being stationed on the border, helping with fighting wild fires, or whatever else the high tech and highly trained soldiers could do easier, faster, and better funded than anything in the law enforcement or national park dept can.

MWSS-373 Marines can patch up damaged runways... The 3,000-foot-long by 75-foot-wide runway will require enough high-quality concrete to cover an area more than five acres in size and four inches deep. Instead of handling heavy bags of quick-setting powder, Marines will work with concrete from trucks hauling loads from one of the island’s concrete plants.

So the Catalina project is far larger in scope than rapid runway repair work Marines typically do and more akin to larger-scale runway repair and airfield construction done by Seabees and “RED HORSE” heavy-construction squadrons with the Air Force and Air National Guard.

Several Seabees with Naval Construction Group 1 and Naval Mobile Construction Battalion 25 from Port Hueneme helped Marines learn the ins-and-outs of working with concrete and rebar, he said. About 120 Marines and some Seabees will work on the project at any given time.


By rotating groups of Marines to Catalina, “we maximize the experience and really take advantage of this opportunity to create a really broad group of Marines who have significant expertise in concrete.”

The Pentagon’s Innovative Readiness Training program started 25 years ago to bolster military readiness while helping local needs. Communities, including remote Native American and Alaska Native villages, request medical, veterinary, cybersecurity, construction or engineering support. Missions often are assigned to reserve units. Some projects are significant, like the long-planned and pending relocation of the Alaskan village of Newtok to higher ground. Others take time. Marine reservists last summer finished a 2,000-foot extension to the Old Harbor airport on Alaska’s Kodiak Island, a project that took six years to complete.

The Catalina Island Conservancy, which owns the airport, (like I said) tapped IRT in early 2017 to help rebuild the nearly 80-year-old runway. Officials didn’t expect to work with Marines.

“We actually were thinking about the Seabees, because we had heard the Seabees do this type of work,” said Cynthia Fogg, the Conservancy’s government liaison and assistant to the president and board. Referrals took them to Port Hueneme, home to West Coast Seabees, and Camp Pendleton, home of I Marine Expeditionary Force. I MEF and the 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing assigned the Catalina project to MWSS-373 to rebuild the runway, along with input from Naval Construction Group 1, 1st Naval Construction Regiment and Navy Mobile Construction Battalion 25, Fogg said.

The privately run Catalina Airport, nicknamed “Airport-in-the-Sky,” is unusual for its location. It sits at 1,602 feet elevation, at the edge of a cliff. Its Runway 4/22 has a hump in the middle to help slow the speed of Wrigley’s DC-3 airplanes.

Three barges loaded up the squadron’s equipment and supplies in San Pedro, Calif. Several days before Christmas, Marines finished the offload at Cat Harbor and transported the gear 13 miles to the airport. The equipment included graders, compactors, scrapers, 7-ton transport trucks and 84 pallets of meals-ready-to-eat and unitized group rations. The squadron will set up an expeditionary camp at the airport, with large BASE-X tents and a field mess and medical section. The Conservancy is providing an empty hangar and trailers for the Marines to use for maintenance and support. Marines will buy perishable foods locally and tap into the local water supply.

With the first phase completed before Christmas, Marines will arrive by helicopters and start work in early January, Flood said. They’ll do final land surveys, check the grade and compact the ground, and they’ll work in phases to build the forms, lay the rebar and pour the concrete that will daily by trucks.

https://news.usni.org/2019/01/02/marines-flex-expeditionary-construction-skills-rebuilding-airport-sky

the entire length of the track, is coated with stickum. Isn't that great? No more spinning, no matter how much power you bring... on the other hand, what's the point of racing a vehicle with wheels if you're racing on glue? Might as well drive on gears that mesh with a splined track surface

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymH9YwGtCx4

I made it to Carlsbad once or twice before it closed... damn shame that by the time I'd have my Super Bee in shape for racing, they'd shut it down for noise

http://georgeklass.net/dragsters.html

After more than half a century of burning rubber, Englishtown / Raceway Park is ending the dragstrip, the longtime site of the NHRA Summernats, it reached the end of the business for profit ideal

The Napp family, which opened the raceway in 1965 and continues to operate it privately, decided to end drag racing, and convert the grandstand and about half the strip into an outdoor concert venue

Other forms of racing and motorsports will go on, including motocross, as well as cart racing and drifting.

http://www.nj.com/monmouth/index.ssf/2018/01/after_52_years_of_burning_rubber_drag_racing_ends.html
https://thecapitalsportsreport.com/2018/01/17/raceway-park-shuts-down-racing-operations/

Where did drag racing begin? Santa Ana? Goleta? Where is the historically 1st 1/4 mile where two hot rods squared off?

When CJ Hart came to Santa Ana in 1944, he found a bunch of outlaw kids drag racing dangerously in the streets and wanted a safe place for them - and for himself and his wife, Peggy - to test their speed.

Peggy, 1951

Hart said he decided to organize professional races at Santa Ana after he and business partner Creighton Hunter had conducted clandestine races on an abandoned Navy airfield, now Mile Square Park in Fountain Valley. When they were chased off by Marines, Hart decided there ought to be a place where cars could race legally.

There wasn't much in Orange County then - just a lot of trees and bean fields and the occasional house. And a small airport with runways that weren't even used.

Eddie Martin's Airfield had an adjacent paved strip to taxi to the runways, and it was used for the first drag races when CJ Hart had the first race there, on June 19, 1950, it is considered the first commercial competition / organized dragstrip.

https://cdm16838.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p16838coll1/search/searchterm/john%20wayne%20airport%20(santa%20ana%2C%20calif.)/field/subjec/mode/exact/conn/and/order/descri/ad/asc

CJ Hart ran a gas station in Santa Ana, and was quick to be fed up with the drive out to El Mirage, so motivated to find a place closer to home, organized a drag race location at Martin's Airfield, and became the sole owner of a drag strip within the first month of operation.

 His first goal was to establish a distance for the cars to race. This way elapsed time could be measured and a real winner could be discovered. He decided to use the Quarter-Mile based upon its accepted use in quarter horse racing.

He then established different classes of cars based upon their abilities in order to make races fair. The cars were split up according to axle ratios, year, make, engine displacements, and safety equipment.

Wally Parks was earlier to racing when he founded the Road Runners Club in 1937, and then worked on creating the NHRA. In April 1953 he had it all together, and had the 1st sanctioned (whatever the hell that means) drag races at Pomona at the LA County Fairgrounds, and that is one reason that Pomona has the 1st and last races of the year.

The 1st nationals were in Great Bend Kansas in 1955

In 1949 Cobb raced Hernandez at Goleta, in a closed off access road leading to the airport. That is regarded as the 1st official drag race.

Hernandez was the shop manager for Vic Edelbrock, and buddies with Isky and Lou Baney, and Cobb was hanging out with Engle and Hilborn. Yup, some major pioneering gearheads were involved from the start and stuck around the sport a very long time

Trivia:

Paved roads were few and far between in the early days of motoring so the main “drag” or road
through town could have been the setting for early races.

By the way, the 1st slingshot is credited by Wikipedia as having been made by Mickey Thompson

https://www.topspeed.com/cars/car-news/the-history-of-drag-racing-ar110505.html
https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/drag-race.html
http://cjonline.com/look-back-drag-racings-nhra-roots
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drag_racing
http://www.pbs.org/opb/historydetectives/feature/drag-racing/
https://www.drivingline.com/articles/the-history-of-drag-racing/
http://wediditforlove.com/Goleta.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/04/us/cj-hart-93-dies-took-drag-car-racing-from-dry-lake-beds-to-success.html
http://georgeklass.net/dragsters.html

a simple way to protect the dragstrip timer guy? Cement or concrete storm drain piece

because the above can injure or kill the track guy pretty fast, the below

center cylindrical piece seems like a damn good idea

http://scottygossonexposed.blogspot.com/2015/11/lost-drag-strips-ii-exposed.html

photos left over from the final edit of Lost Drag Strips II.

http://scottygossonexposed.blogspot.com/2016/04/free-lost-drag-strips-ii-bonus-pages.html

rosin, also known as gold dust, and here are two of the greats using a liberal amount.

Boundary Bay Raceway, Vancouver, B.C., in 1975

http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/threads/dragstrip-rosin-hydro-motive-hydromatic.1042975/

must have been a damn handful to race these

https://www.facebook.com/groups/stiffspeed