Klamath Speedway

The Klamath Racing Association built this hard clay oval, finished in May 1955, to replace the smaller Gem Speedway, which had opened in a baseball stadium in 1952. It sat at the old Moose rifle range at the east end of Eberlein Avenue on the Drews Ranch road, with a west-side grandstand for 1,500. The first oval races ran over Memorial Day weekend, May 29-30, 1955, and floodlights went in that July. On August 15, 1959, an eighth-mile drag race was added to the program at the 3/8-mile dirt oval. It went over so well it was repeated on August 29. The oval racers raced each other, in cars such as Jim Holmes’ blown ‘55 T-Bird and Phil Sheridan’s fuel-injected ‘57 Corvette. The oval was moved a little farther east, probably sometime after the 1970s, and ran into the late 1980s. It still shows faintly in aerial photos just north of Eberlein Avenue and southeast of the Klamath County jail.