B & B Drag Strip (Guymon)

A racer remembered running around 1969-70 at a strip north of Guymon, possibly on an old stretch of highway. An archivist at the Guymon Public Library and Arts Center filled in the rest. B&B’s Drag Strip, northwest of Guymon on U.S. 64, drew Sunday crowds in the 1960s and 1970s and competitors from Texas, Kansas and around Oklahoma. It was paved and lit, with trees, and Bill Beamon owned and ran it. Classes raced elimination rounds for top street eliminator and top stock eliminator. A June 24, 1969 Guymon Daily Herald report lists stock classes D, E, E automatic, F, G automatic, I automatic and J automatic, and street classes B altered, B modified, C modified, C gas, D gas, D modified, E gas, F gas, J gas, J super stock, J super stock automatic, and K through P stock. People who raced there recall a rough, potholed far end and rough patches elsewhere. The strip later closed and the lights came down, which makes it harder to find.

Beamon was a Guymon businessman who also owned Cowboy Cleaners in the 1300 block of N. Main, where Bank of the Panhandle is now. The cleaners was damaged in a 1974 fire after a steam dryer coil exploded and an electrical junction box set clothes alight. In 1954 he started the Elks boxing club, later the Guymon Boxing Club, coached for nearly 20 years, and hosted tournaments at the fairgrounds with fighters from as far as Lubbock, Texas. His boxers won state titles at the Kansas-Oklahoma tournaments that fed the National Golden Gloves, and a few won at the regional level. He also staged benefit matches for the Panhandle Area Council for Mentally Retarded Children. Some accounts put the strip north of CD Alexander’s horse facility. It’s on the south side of U.S. 412, about six miles north of Guymon, where the highway’s bend straightens and runs due west.