Courtland Raceway

Courtland Raceway, also called Courtland Dragway, was running by 1968, the year the Swedish magazine Start & Strip put it on a list of 325 U.S. drag strips. Races ran on a runway of the abandoned Courtland Army Airfield, now Courtland Airport, on the west edge of Courtland just south of Highway 20. Racing was every Sunday, with feature races now and then. On October 11, 1970, for example, a four-way funny car match race pitted two Alabama cars against Jerry Caminito of New York and Chuck Hart of Washington. In 1972, under Nick Carr’s management, races moved back to Saturday nights and the track was NHRA-sanctioned. One fan saw his first drag race there at 13, when his dad took him and his brothers to the quarter-mile on the old World War II base. He watched his hero, Wayne Mahaffey, match race the Alabamian Vega funny car against another Southern legend, Billy Holt. He said it was the loudest thing he’d ever heard and he’s been hooked ever since.