Eagle Mountain Lake National Guard Base

Drag races were held regularly by at least late 1953 on the base’s 6,000-foot runway at Eagle Mountain near Newark. Members of the Knight Riders car club of Arlington raced there for several months in 1953. The Tarrant County Modified Automobile Association, made up of almost forty car clubs, sponsored the races. By 1955 they ran every other Sunday, and gate profits had paid for a $1,000 timing device, weight scales and a public address system. On July 27, 1958, the Striker Car Club held a race there, with $1 admission and a $100 savings bond for top eliminator. NHRA sanctioned races there in 1959-61 on the second and fourth Sundays, and the NHRA Mid-Summer Championship Drag Races were held at the base on July 25, 1959. The base began as a wartime training site for Marine Corps amphibious gliders. After the war it served various military and commercial uses until the Texas National Guard acquired it in 1956. It became an Army Airfield in 1959, changed hands several more times, and in the early 1980s was bought by Kenneth Copeland Ministries, which still owned it in 2015.