Brainerd Optimist Dragstrip

In the 1950s John “Buddy” Houts was one of the people pushing for a drag strip to curb illegal street racing around Chattanooga. He got nowhere until the Brainerd Optimist Club took an interest in promoting a strip whose proceeds would go to charity. With the club’s backing, land was found on Crabtree Road just off Hixson Pike in Middle Valley, and trees were cleared from the farmland for a strip 3,160 feet long and 40 feet wide. Houts and members of the Road Gents car club oversaw the design and construction. The Automobile Timing Association of America sanctioned the track. The Optimists spent $20,000 on it and expected to earn that back in three months. More than 5,000 spectators came to the opening race on August 11, 1957. The area was rural, but neighbors were very upset by the noise and traffic and banded together to shut the track down, without success. From about 1958 newspapers called it the Hixson Drag Strip or Hixson Pike Drag Strip, and the Grim Reapers car club ran the races that year. On August 10, 1958, Bill Douglass of Lookout Mountain set a track record of 130.959 MPH and won top eliminator, a 30-inch trophy and a $25 savings bond. In 1963 the Optimist Club sold the property to John Flewellen, who used the strip as a small airport, now Dallas Bay Skypark. The club moved its drag strip south to Caloosa County, Georgia, where the New Brainerd Optimist Dragstrip opened in 1964 at 745 Scruggs Road in Ringgold. It was still running there in 2015.