Green Valley Drag Strip (East Gadsden)

This strip on Green Valley Road near Gadsden and Glencoe opened around 1959 on land leased from Woody Miller. A group of businessmen started it: Dr. Charles Jordan, M. B. Froan, Ed Rudd, Sam Fordham and his son Charles. Don Garlits headlined on November 8, 1959, possibly the track’s first race. In 1960 Milton Henson leased the track from Miller, who had run it only a few months, and began a long run as manager. By 1961 it was NHRA-sanctioned and raced every Saturday night from May through September.

Ads in 1962 announced new management. On May 26, 1962, Ron Pellegrini made exhibition runs in Tommy Ivo’s former twin-engine Buick dragster. Match races with drivers such as Jimmy Nix were a regular draw, and the ads billed the track as the Southeast’s “finest strip.” For its fourth annual invitational on July 2-3, 1965, the track had been completely resurfaced and had a new return road, new pit bleachers and a pit area for push cars. It ran under IHRA sanction in 1976 and switched from quarter-mile to eighth-mile racing in 1977. It shut down in 1994, reopened briefly a few years later and closed for good in 1997. The unused strip sits between two oval tracks at Green Valley Speedway, 1509 Green Valley Road, one of which Milton Henson built.