Fremont Drag Strip/Baylands Raceway

In late February 1959, crop duster Roland H. Lawrence and four partners asked the Fremont Planning Commission to let them build a drag strip and airport near the Nimitz Freeway between Warm Springs and Irvington. The site had been Naval Outlying Landing Field Heath, a World War II Navy auxiliary strip tied to Moffett Naval Air Station. They planned to spend $400,000 on a 3,500-foot runway and a 3,800-foot drag strip, and Lawrence had already owned and run an airport. The strip was off the Grimmer Boulevard turnoff, twelve miles north of San Jose and fifteen miles south of Hayward, in what is now a retail area just south of where Interstate 880 meets Auto Mall Parkway.

The plan was approved, and the first race on June 21, 1959, drew 1,500 people. The unblown Chrysler B/D of Gibbs Engineering took top eliminator at 141 mph, and Al Hubbard’s C dragster had top speed at 157.29. At the grand opening a week later, on June 28, the Gareth Bros. of Altadena won with an 8.42 at 173.48 mph in a blown Chrysler dragster. Chris Karamesines ran 176.81 mph in his A/FD on November 22 in his first West Coast appearance. Popular racer Yeiji Toyota died after a terrible crash in his record-holding B/FD on November 29. Bobby Langley brought his Scorpion A/FD from Texas for a December 6 meet and ran the low ET.

Hank Vincent set a B/FD national record of 171.42 mph in his “Top Banana” on February 21, 1960. On March 20, 1960, before 12,000 people, Art Malone drove Don Garlits’ car to top eliminator and a world top speed of 187.10 mph. Lyle Fisher set a national record of 8.95 at 175.78 mph in his Speed Sport A/MR on April 10. At the Northern California Fuel and Gas Championships on October 1, 1961, Don Prudhomme set a world ET mark of 8.22 in his Kent Fuller fuel dragster. Glenn Leasher drove Romeo Palamides’ jet dragster to a world record 6.59 at 207.36 mph on April 29, 1962. In a freak accident, ticket taker Frances Irene Cabanyog was crushed to death when she fell under the wheels of a race car trailer.

In 1965 owner and manager Ron Lawrence applied to turn the 120-acre site into an 18-hole golf course. At first the planning commission said the strip would have to pay for certain roads on the property, and Lawrence said he guessed they’d be in drag racing a little longer than planned. Those issues were settled in July 1965, and the commission issued a permit for a golf course in place of the strip. In early 1969 general manager Ron Miller vanished, leaving thousands of dollars in unpaid bills and wages, and promoters Jim McLennan and Don Smith salvaged the operation. Around 1976 the name changed to Baylands Raceway. Neil Burkhart, who was at the last drags, said Baylands closed in 1989 and Southern Pacific immediately plowed furrows across the strip to stop illegal racing, which still show in aerial photos. As he told it, Fremont had agreed to put $3 million toward redeveloping the area as a business park, but once everything was shut down, Southern Pacific and the developers wanted the city to pay half, more like $9 million. The city backed out, the investors followed, and there was no airport, no drags and no business park. Everybody lost.