Circle Drag Strip (Dallas)

Nothing left

Timed by phone and stopwatch, with speeds estimated from a chart
Had a tree in the middle of the shutdown area

Raced: 1958-59
State: Texas
What's left: The site was redeveloped and nothing of the strip remains.
Surface: Blacktop
Location: West of Interstate 635, just beyond the western end of Merrell Road, in a sand and gravel pit
Elevation: 429 ft (131 m)
Coordinates: 32.88851, -96.91132

Old racers say this strip was west of Interstate 635, just past the west end of Merrell Road, in a sand and gravel pit. Safety features were almost nonexistent. There were no guardrails, and spectators could stand right next to the starting line. One old-timer described how the races ran. Starts were flagged, and a man at the line shouted go into a phone to a man at the finish, who started a stopwatch. He then read the time against a chart to estimate the speed and announced it, along with the winning lane, over a PA speaker about as good as a drive-in theater’s. The strip was an old crowned two-lane blacktop road between the gravel pits, with a winding gravel return road back to the dirt and sand pit area by the starting line. Another old racer remembered a tree in the middle of the shutdown area.

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