Harmony Speedway Dragstrip (Brainards)
ClosedClosed No longer racing, but some of the track is still there.
Also known as Harmony Drag A Way
- Burns & Yost got their start at Harmony
- Eastern Drag Times reportedly sponsored a Top Dog meet in 1965
- Raced
- 1964-66
- State
- New Jersey
- What's left
- You can still spot it in aerial photos, or broken pieces of the track surface remain.
- Raced on
- Built as a drag strip
- First race
- June 6, 1964
- Last race
- 1966, possibly 1967
- Track
- 1/8 mile
- Surface
- Asphalt
- Location
- Six miles north of Phillipsburg, between the oval and the grandstands
- People
- Richard Crouse, builder (1962)
- Carl Van Horn, builder and manager (1964-65)
- Dick Fleck, promoter (1966)
- Elevation
- 248 ft (76 m)
- Coordinates
- 40.76851, -75.17393
Harmony Township farmer Richard Crouse and Carl Van Horn, the modified stock car driver from nearby Belvidere, built this clay oval and asphalt eighth-mile drag strip six miles north of Phillipsburg. Construction started in 1962. The D-shaped oval was 5/8 mile around and opened on Friday night, June 7, 1963, with NASCAR-sanctioned modified, sportsman and novice stock car classes. The paved drag strip ran between the oval and the 7,000-seat grandstands, and Saturday night drag racing started June 6, 1964.
According to Ed Beers, Van Horn managed the strip in 1964-65, when it was Harmony Speedway Dragstrip. With Dick Fleck promoting in 1966, it was Harmony Drag A Way. Jack Redd’s Eastern Drag Times reportedly sponsored a Top Dog meet in 1965, and the team of Burns & Yost got their start here. Beers said the drag strip may have run into 1967. Old-timers remembered a potholed return road when it first opened, and if you missed the turn onto it, you were headed up a gravel hill. The last oval races were in 1973.
