Darlington Quarter Drag Strip/Darlington Drag Strip/Florence-Darlington Drag Strip
Status unknownStatus unknown Closed, but nobody has checked how much of the site survives, or the exact spot was never found.
- Lit for night racing with 25 light poles along the strip
- Powder Puff racers used a Le Mans-style running start in 1965
- Tom Smoker Smith beat Jimmy Boyd in a best-of-five Hemi Plymouth match race in 1965
- Raced
- 1964-65, 1967-99?
- State
- South Carolina
- What's left
- How much of the site survives hasn't been checked yet.
- Raced on
- Built as a drag strip
- First race
- June 6, 1964
- Last race
- 1999 according to one old-timer; newspaper mentions end in 1980
- Track
- 1/4 mile (1/5 mile by 1968)
- Surface
- Asphalt
- Location
- About two miles south of Darlington off Highway 52
- People
- Bob Dunbar, co-owner (1964)
- Bill Warren, co-owner (1964)
- Elevation
- 151 ft (46 m)
- Coordinates
- 34.27950, -79.86544
In December 1963 J. O. Padgett asked the Darlington County Commission, on behalf of a car club, to allow drag racing on a taxiway at Darlington County Airport, nine miles north of Darlington. The commission took no official action. A new strip soon brought racing closer to town anyway. Newspapers placed the all-new Darlington Quarter Drag Strip about two miles south of Darlington off Highway 52. Co-owners Bob Dunbar and Bill Warren ran the quarter-mile strip, a paved asphalt track half a mile long, lit for night racing by 25 poles along the strip and more in the pits, with a dirt return road. The May 30 opener was rained out, so the first race came on Saturday night, June 6, 1964, with fifty cars and 600 spectators. Billy Hopson won top eliminator. Saturday nights had limited success, so Wednesday night racing began on July 22, and J. C. Padgett of Darlington won top eliminator that first Wednesday.
Racing resumed after the winter break on Saturday, April 3, 1965. On June 20, 1965, Tom “Smoker” Smith beat Jimmy Boyd in a best-of-five match race between their fiberglass Hemi Plymouths. Smith said he liked the layout because it had plenty of stopping room. In July the Powder Puff racers used a Le Mans-style start, lining up about ten feet from their cars and running to them on the signal. Harold Cain of Fayetteville, North Carolina, beat Smith on September 5, 1965, in his 130 MPH Mustang.
Nothing turned up for 1966. The track reopened under new management on Thursday, August 31, 1967, as Darlington Drag Strip, and an ad for a race on May 11, 1968, said racing would be over a fifth-mile. In 1970 it was renamed Florence-Darlington Drag Strip. On April 12, 1980, passenger Tommy Matthews was killed when the car he was riding in hit a light pole and rolled several times. One old-timer said the strip ran until 1999 despite competition from the bigger Darlington Dragway seven miles to the northwest, but newspapers mention it only through 1980.
