Bunker Hill Drag Strip

History

Jim Hullinger built this strip on Lee Beauchamp’s farm, a mile south of Bunker Hill and 1.5 miles east on U.S. Highway 31. He knew nothing about the sport going in and said he’d never even been to a drag strip and had no idea what he was doing. The site had been used to store street cars, and he used 24 cases of dynamite to clear the tree stumps. The Central Indiana Timing Association ran the races from the first one on August 22, 1956, with racing every Sunday during the season. Phil Hobbs set a track record of 107.91 mph on September 30, 1956, and a month later Bob Peele of Kokomo beat it with 112.50 mph in his dragster.

In 1964 the strip spent $12,000 on resurfacing, and Hullinger invented the “Safe-Start” roller starter and installed it at Bunker Hill, the first in the nation. The track record then was 191.580 mph, held by Ralph Tear of Detroit. One longtime racer remembered a very short shutdown crossed by a railroad track, with a man posted at the end with a flag to try to stop any train that came while a car was in the shutdown. On Saturday, July 17, 1965, Ray Thomas drove Walt Arfons’s “Green Monster” jet dragster to a track record of 213 mph. Two racers died within four months of each other in 1965, one of a heart attack. Car clubs such as the Kokomo Shifters Auto Club and the Idler’s of Flora ran races that year. Hot Rod’s June 1968 issue listed it as NHRA-sanctioned. Another resurfacing in 1970 cost $13,000, and by 1972 racing ran on just 1,000 feet. Hullinger owned and ran the strip through 1996, when he sold it to Steve and Darleen Daniels.