Big Oak Dragway (Columbia)

Buck Adams helped organize this strip. NHRA sanctioned it in September 1967, and that year it raced every Saturday night and Sunday evening, sponsored by the Columbia Automotive Association. One man said an older neighbor told him stories about Oak Lake, as he called it. There was a hard right turn at the start of the shutdown area with the lake right off the edge of the track, and a number of cars apparently ended up in the water. James “Pappy” Greenfield ran off the track in 1967. Near the finish line his car got away from him and went off a 15-foot bank, and he said he was flying like a bird. At the bottom of the hill a fence ran so close to the bank that a car could barely fit between them. The car tried to roll, but he held it and went through the gap. When he finally stopped, a strand of barbed wire was stretched across his radiator as tight as a fiddle string, and he figured a few more feet might have cost him his head.