Great Lakes Dragway (Union Grove)

History

Some sources call this the oldest drag strip in the country still operating. It may be the oldest still running a regular weekly program, but Pomona and Bakersfield both started earlier and still hold races, and the eighth-mile Thornhill strip in Kentucky also predates it and was still racing regularly in 2015. The track’s website says racing began in 1955, but old newspapers don’t back that up. Bob Metzler and Lynn Bennett came up with the idea after leaving the service, and with two others they raised about $50,000 and found 102 acres in the town of Paris, near Union Grove, on the Racine-Kenosha county line road about five miles west of Highway 41. The strip was 3,000 feet long and 50 feet wide. On October 7, 1956, the first big day of racing, 2,000 spectators watched 121 racers, and Al Pfeiffer ran top speed of 97.82 MPH in his Cadillac-powered 1950 Merc. The Great Lakes Timing Association ran weekly races through November 11 that year.

For 1957 the strip was repaved, the entrances and parking were graveled to cut the dust, and 2,000 bleacher seats, a new electronic timer and a public address system were added. Weekly Sunday racing started June 30, 1957. On September 29, Jim Russell of Hammond, Indiana, won a $50 savings bond as the first to top 130 MPH, setting the record at 134.50 MPH and 10.91 seconds in his Packard-powered dragster. Chris Karamesines set a Wisconsin speed mark of 165.137 MPH on July 11, 1959. At the three-day 1960 National Championship Drag Races on July 8-10, 8,000 fans on Sunday saw Art Malone and Karamesines post identical top speeds of 187.50 MPH, seven entries broke Karamesines’s old strip record, and Art Arfons’s Allison-powered “Green Monster” ran 166.33 MPH in 9.59 seconds. On August 14, 1960, Karamesines and Don Garlits each won a round of a match race, and the deciding round never ran because Lyle Fisher blew a transmission and oiled the track. Karamesines had the better speed, 180.19 MPH. Pete Farnsworth of Milwaukee set a record of 8.45 seconds and 171.42 MPH on May 7, 1961, beating Garlits’s 8.63 from the 1960 Nationals. At the 5th Annual National Championship Drag Races on July 7-9, 1961, more than 300 entries raced for over $10,000, eliminations ran at night for the first time, and Karamesines won top eliminator with the fastest speed, 183.83 MPH.

On October 20, 1963, Bob Smith ran 6.30 seconds, thought to be a world record, in the “Untouchable II” jet dragster in a match race with Karamesines. His windshield had cracked on his first run at 245 MPH and was removed, and on the second run his face mask blew over his eyes. He couldn’t stop, went off the end of the track through a steel fence, clipped a telephone pole and hit a car carrying four people on the county road. Smith got a broken nose and cuts, and a passenger suffered a broken collarbone. The jet car was destroyed. More than 20,000 people came to the four-day Labor Day National Open of Drag Racing in 1968, where Fred Goeske set a funny car record of 192.7 MPH and Joe Krupinski won top fuel at 211.26 MPH. Robert “Broadway Bob” Metzler gradually bought out his partners and was sole owner by the 1970s. Three spectators were killed and eight hurt when a dragster’s clutch exploded at the Olympics of Drag Racing on May 27, 1979, and on May 23, 1981, an out-of-control car in the pits injured ten bystanders. Metzler sold the track to Mofoco Enterprises of Milwaukee in 1994.