Bee Line Dragway (Scottsdale)

Ground was broken on July 20, 1963, for a drag strip on the Salt River Indian Reservation. Jim Rodgers, the 1962 national C/S drag champion, built it on eighty acres leased for ten years from the Salt River Pima tribe, four miles north of McDowell Road on Arizona Highway 87. The quarter-mile asphalt strip was 60 feet wide, with seating for 2,000 and a pit area for 300 cars. It opened for weekly Sunday racing under AHRA sanction on October 6, 1963. On November 24, 1963, Bob Sullivan of Kansas City set a track low ET of 7.97 in his “Pandemonium IV” A/FD. Bee Line hosted the 1964 AHRA Winter Nationals, where Art Malone ran the meet’s low ET of 8.03 but Ron Goodsell won top eliminator in Sullivan’s “Pandemonium V” fueler. The track hosted the Winter Nationals again in 1965 and for several years after. In 1967 the event drew 1,400 cars and 40,000 spectators, and it had grown too big for one track. In 1968, for the first time, it was split between Bee Line and Lions Drag Strip over two straight weekends.