Clarksville Dragway

History

Clarksville Dragway opened on July 4, 1963, though incorporation papers weren’t filed until March 13, 1964. It raced Saturday nights and Sunday afternoons. Clarksville Speedway, Inc. built it, with John M. Ardinger as corporation president, Jon R. Ardinger as track director and E. L. D. Breckinridge as promotions director. Next to the strip was a shaded picnic area and playground called the Recreation Park. A 1968 list of U.S. drag strips in the Swedish magazine Start & Strip included it. In the late 1960s and early 1970s it went by Montgomery County Drag Strip. In August 1972 Bill Hamilton of White Bluff set an eighth-mile track record of 5.96 in his Chrysler-powered dragster. In 1974 a new group, Speedway Park, Inc., headed by Charlie Hinton, took over and renamed it Speedway Park, or more specifically Clarksville Speedway Drag Strip. Buford Edwards owned the track in the 1970s. In the 1980s the National Harley Riders Association held its national finals there for six years before outgrowing it. It still runs as Clarksville Speedway, an eighth-mile track next to a clay oval.