What was the name of your 1/4 mile when cruising?

Beaumont st , Auckland , New Zealand .

 

We had a few in Tampa Fl.
Tyson st which if you didn't stop you ended up in a ditch.
Old Airport Rd which was ok till one guy broadsided a cop.
Gandy bridge between Tampa and St Pete which is probably still used today.

 

There were only 2 that had nick names other than the road or rte # itself.

One was "Blue Plains". We ran right in front of the Blue Plains sewage treatment plant. Yes it could get smelly back then.

The other was "NASA" We raced right in front of the Goddard Space flight center in Greenbelt Md. They were tracking Apollo missions inside and we were burning rubber out side.

 

my favorite was always a place call "mile straight." not sure if it was actually a mile,but for the mountains of nc it was a great spot a few miles outside of town on a sparsely traveled rural road that was long straight and flat.

there was aslo a great spot in south memphis--don't know that it had a name per se--in the late 90's in an industrial zone. hundreds of cars and bikes turned out on friday and saturday to race. It got to the point before I moved away that food vendors started turning up and occasionally cops would show up just to watch the races.

 

Trinity Blvd in Ft. Worth, Texas
aka Gravel Pits

Later it was behind "Miller Brewery" on the south side of FTW

 

San Antonio in the mid-sixties it was "Little Green Valley" which is now Starcrest on the NE side of town..It was named after the Green Valley Race track in Dallas/Ft.Worth area..We would set up our races at lunch and go out there and race after school..The Thomas Bros. Speed shop would trailer stuff out there on weekend nights...

 

McWhorter Rd. Savannah, GA - Really OSCA Rd if you google it.

 

Caldwell was out in the alfalfa fields then, Mooney's Grove was a safe stretch way out of town. Stoplight to stoplight on Mooney when the police were taking their dinner break at Mearles. There were far fewer police then.

In Fresno it was stoplight to stoplight on Belmont between the Big Boy on Blackstone and the loop at Roeding Park. Later the big block cars ran behind Roeding Park on Golden State from the Loop to Olive, a section we called "The Tracks." The police stuck to downtown and Blackstone Avenue and didn't bother us.

In little Kingsburg it was "Piss Road" outside of town, known to most people as Madsen Avenue, now a nice street in a high class neighborhood. Coincidentally, I drive Madsen to get home now everyday, and often think back to the wild races we had there when it was a little country road. It was named for my great-grandfather, Lars Madsen, who built the first farm out there. My Mom flipped the family '66 Dodge on that road and wound up upside down in a muddy field one morning in 1971 - she said she wasn't racing. Right, Mom.

 

When I was young Caldwell was the end of town (remember the Crows Nest?) and we would just race towards Mooney's Grove or out to Tulare, but for the somewhat "orginized" races you could get a couple dozen guys and cars together out at Ave. 320 on any Fri./Sat. night.

 

When in High School we had a place called three tenths. There was originally 3/10 of a mile maerked out. Then later we marked out a real quarter mile. But folks raced either and it was determined before the race.

You went out past the highschool and down a hill past a little creek. there was about a mile and a half maybe 2 miles of farm fields on either side of the road and it was pretty flat.

Everyone would meet up at Scotty's Drive In and then later it was a regular drag race. Somwetimes you would just challenge someone and go down there but normally on the weekends you could find several cars down at 3/10 hookin' 'em up. Well until the police showed up, then it was katey bar the door.

 

I raced on Town Park many times. Between 1983 and 1990 I must've raced fifty times there and watched another 200 or so races. After that place got old we went out to Cinco Ranch before all the homes were built and raced. That would've been 1991-1993 or so. Other spots I knew of but never raced on were Tanner, Britmoore and on the early stretches of the Beltway 8 feeder north of Katy Freeway.

Cinco Ranch I called out a guy with an 86 Vette ragtop for having a 406 SBC. He was setting up a money race and had the hood open for everyone to see his "stock" tuned port 350. The harmonic balancer was the large externally balanced one you'd see on 383 strokers and on 400 SBC's back before low cost aftermarket internally balanced cranks were available. Also, the buddy I was with had a 78 Regal with a 400 SBC so I knew what to look for.

I didn't have money on the race but didn't like vette guy's BS. I said, "Looks like a 406 to me."

He perked up, voice went up an octave and he said very nervously, "Who said 406?"

The guy he was planning to hustle for $$$ dropped his bet. The owner of the Vette ran it anyway. It was too fast to be a stock TPI car.

Sadly, vette man was killed in that car a few years later.

Never forget those days.

 

Murphey's Road - Farmer City, IL.

 

The Crows Nest and the bands that played there, including the guy that started the Doobie Brothers. I was too young and my parents would never let me go to those places, plus we never had money for that kind of stuff (spent it all on cars).

There were wicked fast hotrods in Visalia in the middle and late sixties, but we came down mostly to look at the girls. I remember we spun a main bearing in my friend's Pontiac on Mooney one night. We were sick since we had just rebuilt it - turned out it had one main 0.010 under from the factory, and we put all standard bearings in. We miked stuff after that.

Visalia is a much older town than most in the Valley, with a history of train robberies, the Dalton Gang, and Sontag & Evans. During the Civil War it split between the Confederate and Union sympathizers, each with their own newspaper to fuel conflict (the Times versus the Delta). Many people from the south settled in the San Joaquin Valley to take advantage of the cheap or free land, particularly between Bakersfield and Visalia. You could still feel a kind of rebel vibe around there in the sixties. Some of the cafes served southern food you couldn't get anywhere else.

 

"Old" Doty Rd. on the south side of Chicago. Basically a frontage road that ran parallel to I-94. At some point there was new pavement laid on a road just north of there and that became "New Doty Rd." or "by the old incinerators". The "new" road was bisected by railroad tracks. The cars ran from the tracks toward the west and the bikes ran east. It was so tight on either side of the street with cars and people, it was a scary place to race.

 

River Road..........Peninsula, Ohio

 

In the '70's and '80's it was Columbus Pkwy in Vallejo, Ca.
Nice long 2 lane stretch with a marked off 1/4 mile and no cross streets. It was easy to see the cops coming from a half mile away.
You could still see the painted finish line (if you knew where to look) up until the late 1990's when they re-paved the road and put in a divider and an Automall.
We also used I-780 where it ended coming into town, but only from 12-12:30 AM...that was the time of the Sherrifs Dept. shift change!!

 

In Memphis it was the "Industrial Park", Track to track, between the railroad tracks it was just at a quarter mile, the launch wwasn't bad, but shit could get a little squirrely at the "finish line".
Next was "Christine Rd.", a wide downhill stretch, with a hard left turn at the top of the next hill. It seemed like a big open rd when I was young, but I saw it a couple of years ago and wouldn't run a go kart on it.
Boy, were we stupid!

 

The "Old Highway" former part of US 33 that was then a county road heading out of Chouteau, OK and "Lock and Dam Road" near Inola, OK.

 

In my day it was "forks of the river" (industrial park)

In dad's day it was on an the unfinished section of I-40, not sure what they called it.

 

Let's see....early 90's, Kent/Tukwila area in WA.

Snap-On
Keibler
South Park

 

On top of Tablerock Dam in Branson Mo. area.

 

In Virginia Beach we would run on Ferrell Parkway - we called it "Ferrell Dragway."

In my hometown in Nebraska there is a road right out of town along the river that has two signs exactly 1/4 mi apart. Unfortunately the road split about a qtr mile after that - the left lane turned to gravel and the right turn had a 20mph corner so shutdowns could get hairy. We called it "Suicide".

 

Chrome Ave west of Homestead,AKA Bear run,we called the Homestead grils Bear ,cus they mostly did not shave there legs in Homestead
Miami/Homestead,1962,we're at the sat nite midnites with about 30+ rods and sleepers plus maybe 50 others came to see,out on south Chrome Ave,just farm feilds[pole beans this time of year,] each side of the road. This nite the cops set up sneek raid on the drags. Well when the coppers showed from out of a dirt farm road and closed off the north end real fast=were you ended up after a run.
We were in Tim's Blue Spook 55 ford/390 FE packed into it.and about 1/2 way in a run,Tim see the cop lights flashing way up ahead and make a right turn into a pole bean field,bean's and sticks going up over the car like mad and he's holding speed above 50 as we're cuting that field and wondering if we're gunna fine a drainage canal or well pipe,but kept cutting that field for what seemed like a mile+ tel we found a dirt framroad and head south,came out after a lot of wondering around near A&W US1,stoped and cleaned sticks and beans off and out of the Spook so we could go into A&W[AKA Bear Shop] with out looking like were we'ed been.
Ya the cops came in about 10min. later looking at all the cars there as they drove slowly by,few we cleared there eyeballing ,no beans showen
The news paper said next day they got 5 drag racers,but no talk about that there were about 30 racers there,HA
Bet those bean feilds had more then one hole run in them.

 

Indian Hill...Straight and mostly flat...Someone painted start and finish lines. Only problem was it connected Auburn-Folsom Rd with I80 AND the CHP Regional Headquarters...You had to keep an eye out for Highway Patrol cars sneaking up...

 

When I lived out in Guam, we went to Two Lovers or Back road. Man it seems so long ago.
Now I just go to Sac Raceway.

 

Yep, the biginning of the South Park Freeway was where we went in the mid 70's-early 80's. South Park International Raceway.

You knew there was a race when Herfy's in White Center emptied out in a matter of minutes.

Good times and some seriously fast cars.


Larry

 

" NABB NATIONALS"

Nabb was a small town in southern Indiana located on the county line road.
If one county sherriff showed up everyone went the other way.

If the state boys showed up, well, there was trouble.

 

"The Y"- intersection of MO highway 15 and US 136, Memphis, MO. 1/4 mile to the City Lake Road. Saw many drag races there in my youth.

 

late 70s. Sioux City. Thunder Valley, Marian, SD

 

carling ave in ottawa