Colonial Beach Dragstrip

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Also known as Longfield Drag Strip; Reno Skypark

Colonial Beach Dragway now operates as Custom T’s Motorsports Park.

More than seventy Super Stockers raced on October 13, 1963
Shortened to an eighth mile after a car with failed brakes hit a house

Raced: ca. 1963-present
State: Virginia
Raced on: Built as a drag strip
First race: August 25, 1963
Track: 1/8th mile
Address: 2035 James Monroe Highway
Colonial Beach, VA 22443
People: Billy Powell, builder (1963)
William I. Cooper, builder (1963)
Landon Curley, builder (1963)
C. M. Prichett, builder (1963)
Earnest E. Brulle, builder (1963)
Elevation: 41 ft (12 m)
Coordinates: 38.21483, -77.01691
Contact: ctmotorsportspark.com [email protected]

The site started as Reno Skypark, a small general aviation airport built in 1956 with a 3,500-foot turf runway, which closed after 1960. Five men, Billy Powell, William I. Cooper, Landon Curley, C. M. Prichett and Earnest E. Brulle, bought the 53-acre Longfield Farms and built the strip there, and it opened as Longfield Drag Strip on August 25, 1963. On October 13, 1963, more than seventy Super Stockers came for a big event, won by Huston Platt in his ‘63 Chevy at 11.51 seconds and 122 MPH. Frank Bennett was public relations manager in 1965, and the “Hemi Under Glass” wheelstander ran there on August 28 that year. According to one local racer, it was a quarter-mile track until it closed in 1980, and it reopened in the mid-1980s as an eighth mile after a car’s brakes failed and it ended up against the side of a house.

Colonial Beach Dragway, 1971 USGS topo map

Malcolm Durham at Colonial Beach Dragway,

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