Caddo Mills Drag Strip

Around 1950 the Chaparral Roadster Club of Dallas got permission to hold drag races on a new stretch of Hampton Road in Dallas. The club then arranged to rent an abandoned World War II emergency landing strip from the town of Caddo Mills, 25 miles north of Dallas, and race there on the first Sunday of each month. The old concrete strip, two miles southwest of town just off Highway 67, was a triangle 6,000 feet on each side. The first race, on August 19, 1951, had 56 entries and reportedly thousands of spectators, with stopwatch timing. It was the first NHRA-sanctioned strip in Texas and the second in the country. The North Texas Championship on October 30, 1954, drew 150 racers from Texas and Oklahoma, and in 1955 races ran on the first Saturday and Sunday of every month. At a two-day NHRA regional on June 9-10, 1956, Oklahoma dirt contractor Melvin Heath had top speed of 139 MPH in his Chrysler-powered dragster, and he went on to be NHRA’s national champion that year. The North Texas Timing Association ran races there from 1957 to 1961. Don Garlits raced at Caddo Mills in 1958 and remembered a high-traction concrete surface. Bobby Langley’s “Scorpion” A/FD was featured on May 7, 1961, and Langley set the track record that year at 8.38 seconds and 184.61 MPH. A regional meet was held on Sunday, June 3, 1962. The strip ran under NHRA sanction in the 1960s, and Bill Hassell managed it in 1967.