Holly Ridge Drag Strip

Several part-owners, including members of the Ottaway and Sholar families, ran this strip north of Wilmington. Felix Ottaway, son of founder Darrell Ottaway, said that before the drag strip was built, races ran on a mile-long runway, probably the north-south one, at the old Camp Davis Army base. Several racers remember it differently, saying the races were always on the abandoned military runway and never on a purpose-built strip. One, Ken Roberts, raced there in the 1980s and said everyone with a hot rod in that part of the state knew Holly Ridge, the whole area was uncontrolled and easy to get into, and there was always a crowd on weekends. On April 23, 1961, Ronnie Butler drove Jack Strader’s 1961 Pontiac Super Stocker there, and a month later he won Ultra Stock and Stock Eliminator in it. The last race was a motorcycle event in the early 1980s with the Port City Wheelers.

Whether the racing was on the runway or a separate strip, and whether it was an eighth or a quarter mile, is still open. Runway racing would almost certainly have been timed over a quarter mile. There may have been two strips. Edsel Presley described an official Holly Ridge Drag Strip that closed in the late 1960s and an unofficial one on an abandoned military runway with no rules. According to his father, it was wild, with six cars at each end running toward each other and passing, cars running off into the woods and armed locals in the crowd. Presley said the military dug a big ditch around it in the ’70s after some Marines were killed there. Two Marines, Harlon Henderson and Vernon W. Davis, died on Sunday, March 5, 1967, when their cars collided while drag racing on the abandoned airstrip.