Burnt Valley Drag Strip (Ragland)

Status unknown

Outlaw track with no guardrail and a sign reading "Enter at Own Risk"

Raced: 1957-1970s
State: Alabama
What's left: The exact spot was never found. If it's on the map, the pin only marks the general area.
Raced on: Built as a drag strip
Track: 1/8 mile
Surface: Concrete
Location: Near Ragland, at the edge of a field reached by dirt roads
People: Ragland Timing Association, race organizer
Dawford Campbell, starter and renter (1979)
Johnny Southern, renter (1979)

No one has pinned down where this strip was yet.

A concrete eighth-mile strip existed near Ragland by 1957, maybe earlier. It was an outlaw track with no guardrail, and the Ragland Timing Association ran the races. Lewis Carden, owner of the Helena Drag Strip, took top eliminator at the Statewide Stock Car race there on May 3, 1959. Little is known about the track in the 1960s and 1970s beyond an Anniston Star article from June 24, 1979. It described a strip at the edge of a field, reached by dusty dirt roads past cow pastures, with a sign at the end of the road reading “Burnt Valley–Enter at Own Risk.” By then the track used a Christmas tree for starts and handed out trophies at Sunday afternoon races. In 1979 the starter, Dawford Campbell, and Johnny Southern rented the track to put on races.

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