Axle Twisters Drag Strip (Canton)
Nothing leftNothing left No longer racing, and nothing of the track remains.
Planned as a drag strip, but there's no sign it ever opened.
- Newspapers wrongly billed it as the nation's first purpose-built strip
- Raced
- 1958
- State
- Kansas
- What's left
- The site was never redeveloped, but every trace of the strip has been removed.
- Raced on
- Fairgrounds
- Track
- 3/4 mile (planned)
- Surface
- Asphalt (planned)
- Location
- Canton Fairgrounds
- People
- Axle Twisters, car club behind the project (1958)
- Elevation
- 1,581 ft (482 m)
- Coordinates
- 38.39285, -97.42543
Newspapers wrongly called this the nation’s first purpose-built drag strip. In early February 1958, news reports said grading would soon start at the Canton Fairgrounds on a strip 60 feet wide and three-quarters of a mile long, with asphalt donated by a McPherson company. The Kansas Hot Rod Association and car clubs from Salina, Wichita, Clay Center, Manhattan, McPherson, Newton and Hutchison promised to help. Don Waltner of Moundridge, a member of the Axle Twisters, said the club had raced southeast of Moundridge for a couple of years until the sheriff shut them down, then got approval to build north of town, east of Canton by the fairgrounds. Construction started, but the plan fell through and the strip was never finished.
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