History Places - Where did you guys Street Race when you were a kid ?..... Could be interesting

The "Baby Hemi", loved that motor (engine-for the politically correct). I had one in a Dart and a 31 Roadster.

 

We had a real nice 4-mile long stretch of straight flat highway in the middle of farm country just south of my hometown. You could easily see anything on that stretch for a mile or more, so it was relatively safe to line up side by each. Some of the hoodlums had measured off a 1/4 and painted white lines across the road.

 

In Athens, Ohio, we would go out east of town on US 50, turn around at Harmony Road, and race westward back toward town, and occasionally Poston Road, until the pavement buckled really bad from heavy coal truck use. In the Glouster area, it was Tommy's stretch on Ohio 329, saw a guy take off in a Mustang there one night in reverse. The New Marshfield bypass on Ohio 56 was the best and safest, it was near the Vinton County line and the State Patrol nor the Sheriff's Dept. made it out there very often. We had a 1/4 mile marked off out there. Great fun back then.

 

Berlin turnpike -dayhill rd windsor 5-15 wethersfied route 9 Franklin ave Maple ave Hartford

 

In San Antonio, our favorite place was on Basse Rd. from the stop light at McCullough to the Rail Road tracks, almost a 1/4 mile. Then one lane went straight and the other went to the left....very handy in case you needed a quick escape for one reason or another

 

So Cal - Fullerton - lots of places to hit the pedal - Bastanchury Rd was a good one - not far from my house - one night '62 Chev with 409 lost control & ended up in a ditch upside down - by dawn someone had removed the 4 speed trans - just hitting it from a stop sign fun too - late one night, while driving my '56 GMC with the factory Pontiac V8 & hydro trans, hot '56 Ford pulls up next to me and we go for it - oops, turns out that the one car behind us was Cop - other car pulls over, and I kept going - Cop followed other car to curb - down a side street with no lights and slowly head for home - joys of youth

 

Late '50s- early '60s when I was in High School (outside of Phila) it was in front of the "Moo" on Rte 30 from the light to the RR bridge(pretty close to a 1/4 mi) with lots of "action" almost any night, especially weekends. In Pittsburg CA(early '70s) it was Camp Stoneman on Sunday mornings. Before the city started digging trenchs across the old paved sections, cars would show up from Oakland(I remember Louie Hills "Ole Blue" '57 Ford /427 Ford), Richmond, locally was Sylvester Warren's "Big Red"('56 Chev/BBC-- a SERIOUS money runner!!), The "preacher" & his early 'vette, & lots more... a lot of money DID change hands!! Yes, it was dangerous, but the street racing in the East Bay for the most part, was rather "low-key" in that period because "Stoneman on Sunday" was where it was "settled" without the threat of "police activity" being involved.

 

Milner and me used to hang out on Paradise Road.....

 

^^^^I'm lying^^^

 

In the early 70's, the fast cars in The Couve. went to Alcoa.
Not that I was ever involved in that sort of thing!

 

Early 60's in Sacramento. Elverta Road north of McClellan AFB was marked for 1/4 mile. It was straight and had very little traffic after dark on weeknights. On weekends we raced stoplight to stoplight on K Street in downtown Sacramento. American Graffiti could have been filmed there in 1962. Mel's and Stan's drive-ins were near K St. Submarine races were held about 3 miles from K St. on the Sacramento River.

 

From downriver area of Detroit. Raced on Stecker Road which in an industrial area. On Northline Road which at that time bordered Detroit Metropolitan Airport but was gobbled up as the airport expended. Telegraph Road. Occasional trips to Woodward Ave where the hottest cars could be found.

 

I grew up in. Oktaha, a town of 200 folks,on Highway 69 in Southern Muskogee county , Oklahoma.
My older friend, Richard, and I would race our shadow on that highway late at night after the traffic died down to nothing. I was 14 and was having the time of my life! We had a 1/4 mile marked off and ran against a watch. He had a 58 Chevy with a 348 that we put 3X2 on.
We went on to race others as time went on, mainly on back roads and highways. We had a special place to race outside of Muskogee, we called “Handcock” as that was the street we used to get out there, but the road we raced on was “ Country Club”. Took my OT car many nights at maybe 8:00 pm and didn’t get back to town for several hours because before we got done racing, others would show up and we watch/race them. Wonderful days!



Bones

 

Behind the GM plant, in South Gate California. I think it was Randolph St. We'd cruise Tweedy Blvd, looking for a race. This was mid to late 1960s.

 

Too late, doesn't matter now. You know I'm going to call you Toad from now on.

 

In the late 60's we sometimes hung out at a little drive-in (Dolans?) close to White's Mill. Lots of races were set up there, they (we) would head out 56 just out of town and race up the hill towards Union. I remember a big block 64 Galaxie that was pretty fast and took on all comers.

 

on the northside of Houston in the late 80's most people went to West rd (when the cops showed up it was a mad house LOL people going every direction)couple people died out there .There was a railroad track at the end and some guy in a Camaro hit it going over 100
one of the lesser known spots was out in the country Self Road. bad part of that one was you had to go around a sharp turn to get to the straight part and if the cops were there you couldn't see them and they had you !

 

So you are one of the original Okies from Muskogee!! I sing the song sometimes when I get a bunch of beer in me My favorite Haggard song.

 

If you lived ANYWHERE near Boston, you knew about " the marsh road"
Route 107 in Revere and Saugus.
Action every weekend night after midnight.

 

I grew up in southern Muskogee county Oklahoma, we would race across Eufaula Dam

 

Had two spots in two different counties. Both two lane roads that just happened to have bridges 1/4 mile apart. Launch off the concrete bridge on one end, race to the end of the other bridge. Won some, lost some.

 

We did some stop light to stop light racing, but serious stuff was down west of town on old potash highway just south and east of the drive in theatre. We also did fine racing in the Fonner Park parking lot. Brings back a lot of memories!

 

That was south and west of the Drive in theatre

 

Grand Avenue going east from the light at Mission Blvd

 

In and around Everett, Wa., was the Hwy 529-Marysville flats through the bridges, Airport Rd., and Hwy 526/AKA Boeing Freeway (it was even marked with start/finish lines; start said Pacific Speed Raceways). Seattle area consisted mostly of Harbor Island, and Golden Gardens Park (there were actually stickers that read, Golden Gardens Raceway). I'm sure there were many other places. Now, the Renton industrial areas are where it's mostly concentrated, but heavily patrolled; it's mostly "tuner" cars anyway. There's a "group" in the Lake Stevens/Marysville area that's an off-shoot of Street Outlaws, but they mostly race from a rolling start. River Rd. out in Snohomish had start/finish lines painted on the road, and tire marks, but I've never actually heard of any racing. I am Butch/56sedandelivery.

 

The two most used places that we raced at were, on Rt. 55's the {Beacon stretch}, and the Rt. 11's {river bend stretch}. We still talk about the infamous names of all the bad Hot Rods, and muscle cars that raced there back then. Here's some name droping, Gene's 36 pickup, Micky's Chevelle, Sammy's 36 coupe, Bell's Camaro. Gene's Vette, Jenkin's Roadrunner, Riteniour's Mustang, Ron's Vette, Cambell's Charger, Stickley's Demon, {Porky's Toy}a Chevelle, Speed's Nova, Donny's 426 Hemi Roadrunner, The Vaughn brothers El camino, and the Bowman boys, with their old, { Dodge delivery} Before it was mine, but I had fall'en in love with it! They raced it alot. That's just to name a few! but there were a lot more. Here's a quick { STORY }, Over the years I still like to take the Hot Rods through the quarter, ever so often. Very early one morning { about 2 years ago or so } I couldn't sleep. So I thought I'd take the delivery, for a little cruise thru the 1/4 mile, at river bend stretch. So I fired her up, and let it warm up for a bit. But the garage is just below our bedroom. A minute or two later the garage door opened, and the wife had came down to see what I was doing. I told her I was just going for a little cruz, because I couldn't sleep. She said, well now that she was up, she may as well go with me. So when we got to the river bridge that's the starting point of the 1/4 mi. She said you better not be doing, what I think your doing. I assurred her that it was okay, and that I did this quite often. Not this night though! As we just passed the river bend, at the end of the quarter mi. I glanced in my rear view mirror, and saw blue lights! There was nothing on the road that night. But now there is me, and these blue lights coming my way. So I decided to just pull over, and get what ever I deserved. I was watching the cop coming toward me. But just as he got beside me, he turned off his lights. Then he just kept on going. I guess that he wanted me to know that he saw me. But didn't want to stop. I figured the officer probably knew me, and would sometime tell me about that night. But so far, that's never happen. But my wife sure reminds me of it! Lol I need to read this thread from it's beginning. I'm sure there's some real COOL stories. Thanks Ron...

 

Paulie B,
I was 2-0 up on Day Hill Road one night, against the boys from Mickey's Hamburgers.
I was driving my buddy's 65 GTO for him. He was good at breaking the rear end, but not at power shifting the stock shifter.
1st I beat their b.a. 66 442 and they wouldn't pay up until I raced a hot 396 Chevelle. Beat him too but they still wouldn't pay. They claimed we were running funny gas. Those guys would just beat you up instead of paying for a loss.
I just looked, and Old Day Hill is bypassed, and lots of motels in the area for Bradley Intl' ,but the road is still there by the tobacco fields and barns.

 

They had organized street races at Golden Gardens in Seattle when I got back from the Army in 1969. They even set a flash light in a garbage can aimed into another for a starting line beam. That got a bit hairy when I was hitting 4th gear and a VW bug pulled out of the marina in front of me though. I got it stopped, went back an picked up the guy who was with me and left that night.
Around the same time we raced on the East Valley Road out of Renton by the radio tower. Picked up a race or two sitting at Dags in Renton watching the cruisers on the loop go by.
We caused a couple of out of town "street racers" to get a display of speed ticket on the Renton loop by pretending to line up a pair of cars next to each other at the light before you passed the high school with someone with a fast car in another lane a couple of lanes away. We went for ten feet and they got the ticket from the cop sitting in the school parking lot.
Headers / Hedders on here from Prosser Wa and his buds used to paint start and finish lines on the road outside of Prosser where we got into some serious racing at times. Story was that the highway department painted the stripes when they painted the road stripes in years following. I found out that you didn't want to do best two out of three out there though.
Here in Toppenish they had a quarter marked off on a farm market road the other side of town that had little or now traffic on it after dark. The good and bad was that you could see for a couple of miles out there and while you could spot the cops they could watch from quite a ways away and then block off the roads to and from and pen you in. I didn't have a car fast enough to race anyone with in those days though. The standing joke was that I could race one of my friends who drove a Renault Dauphine in my 55 Nash Metropolitan rag top and no one knew we were racing.
After I got married and lived in McGregor Tx we had a quarter marked off outside of town where we raced on Saturday nights but that got out of hand as too many people started showing up to watch. We finally called it quits because there were too many spectators. I ran my Cutlass against a buddy in his 390 AMX there one night and beat him and we swapped cars and I beat him while driving his AMX and him in the Cutlass.

 

Ahhhh, those days were really fun. I lived in central Oregon and when the new hiway was built the racers drove through the juniper trees from the new highway to the old one to race. The state put up a berm of dirt and we just drove around to make a new path to the old road.
It was 64-66 and muscle cars were just coming out. We had 409 Impalas, 406 and 427 galaxies, 55-57 chevys by the dozen, hot rod 54-58 Fords, the new mustangs and new GTOs. There was a smattering of hot MoPars too.
Bend was the next town over and the exact same thing happened regarding putting up a new highway and leaving the old one. There might me 300 cars parked in the Juniper trees, competing and spectating, Once I watched 2 state police Dodges with 413 engines race with a big crowd to cheer them on.
My classmate and good buddy Jim would race in Redmond near the ball fields and we got busted racing his 56 Pontiac against my folks 55 Olds 88. He'd beat me every time 'till one night I came off the line [Neutral drop] perfectly and leaped 1/2 car out on him and thats' where it stayed to the finish line. I was so pumped.....Uh-oh. The city cap busted us and we had to pay a $105 dollar fine and my dad wouldn't let m use the car anymore....so I bought it from my mom! Put chrome wheels and cheater slicks on it. It was pale yellow and white tu-tone.

 

Anybody who raced in Central/North Central Iowa in the '60s or '70s? I grew up hearing stories about racing in Des Moines, Fort Dodge, out on Beech St. South of Webster City, and racing in/around my hometown of Eagle Grove. But, I always like to hear more from people who were there.
I didn't turn 16 until the '90s, so there were only a small handful of cars around that would've even been worth racing at that point.