Grandview International Dragway/Raleigh County Dragway/Mountaineer Dragway (Beckley)

Chuck Allen, who owned a construction company, built this strip on land leased from Minor Scott, and it was racing by June 1965. It was 30 feet wide and 3,000 feet long, on a plateau at Table Rock east of Beckley, and it’s still there, northeast of I-64 and Grandview Road. On June 27, 1965, 3,000 spectators watched 80 cars, and Johnny Kirk of Hinton took top time and top eliminator at 10.9 seconds in his ‘64 Dodge. There were no bleachers yet. The 1966 season opened March 20 on a fifth-mile asphalt strip. Allen hoped to widen it five feet on each side and lengthen it to a quarter mile to meet NASCAR standards by early April, but the May 15 race, won by Herman Lewis of Beckley in his B/G ‘62 Chevy, was still on the fifth mile. On Memorial Day Allen offered a $500 purse, Frank Boggess ran the best time of 9.54 seconds at 118.34 MPH in his fuel-injected 427 Hemi-Charger, and a Powder Puff class ran for the first time. Electronic timing and a Christmas tree went in for the West Virginia Stock Classic on July 3-4, with a $3,000 purse. The strip was reported as a quarter mile for a Super Stock and funny car meet on October 9, 1966, with pre-entries including Malcolm Durham’s Corvair, Bruce Larson’s Chevelle, Lenwood Craft’s Hemi-Mustang and the Gustin Brothers Comet, but no results were published.

Local papers don’t mention the track at all in 1967. In spring 1968 ads announced new management, NHRA rules and guaranteed purses, which raises the question of whether the big 1966 purses were ever paid. A Raleigh Register reporter at the May 5, 1968, race called it the worst drag strip in the world for organization and fair competition. He said spectator cars blocked race cars from the pits, no rain checks were given despite what the ticket said, and the track couldn’t possibly be nationally sanctioned as advertised. A woman at her first drag race on August 25, 1968, described trudging through tall weeds, nearly falling through the bleachers, and waiting an hour past starting time until a man explained that someone had stolen the public address system overnight. The sunny day turned to rain, the hot dogs were all bread, bugs bit, and the cars seemed so slow she figured she could outrun some of them on foot, so she left.

The track was Grandview Dragway through 1973. New owner R. J. Coleman filed papers on May 10, 1974, for Raleigh County Speedway and Dragway, the name it used from 1974 to 1977. He switched to eighth-mile racing, started an annual two-day Memorial Day Spring Fling, and built an oval next to the strip that lost money for at least its first four years. In 1977 he said the drag strip made money because it was established. It was IHRA sanctioned in 1977. In 1994 it joined seven other East Coast strips to form the Southern Bracket Racing Association, leaving the IHRA for several years.