Emma Air Park

Josephson Airport, a World War II auxiliary field in Emma just west of Asheville, was renamed Asheville Airpark sometime in 1946-48. Joe Josephson, who ran it, put on air shows and traveling circuses, and in early July 1957 he started eighth-mile drag races there to cash in on the sport’s popularity. Racing was on dirt at first. Allen Smith remembered that the paying public didn’t like the dirt, so an 800-foot paved section was built just for drag racing, with a fence to keep fans off it. The hangar was closed, with nothing in it but the remains of six T-6s. He said the Saturday night races drew big crowds in the mid to late ’50s.

Gene Sluder and Wayne Waldrop promoted the races, and the strip was reportedly to be called Dixie Drag Strip, not the one in Burlington. In mid-August 1959 the Custom Toppers car club announced in the Asheville Citizen-Times that it was cutting ties with the strip, for reasons since forgotten. On August 23, 1959, on a calm day, lightning struck the fence in front of the hangar where people gathered to work on cars before the race. It killed two boys standing near the fence, one of them 18-year-old Gary Lee McNabb of Waynesville, and knocked several people down. Racing stopped for that day but resumed the next week, when an ad said the Ridge Runners car club owned and ran the strip. Gary Bradley set an eighth-mile track record of 88 MPH in his Chrysler-powered Model A on June 25, 1960. The last race found was Sunday, May 14, 1961. Large industrial buildings now cover the site.