Lassiter Mountain Dragway/Birmingham Dragway (Coalburg)

History

The Black Widows car club, with W. D. Ragland as president, built this strip in northwest Birmingham around 1956 or 1957. Newspapers reported it had been shut for a while so the racing strip could be lengthened, and on August 24, 1958, the club held an opening race on what papers called a newly completed 3/4-mile strip. The club put on several charity races, giving the earnings to school lunch programs, the March of Dimes, Little League baseball and programs for mentally handicapped children. By 1959 it was NHRA-sanctioned and racing on the second and fourth Sundays, managed by Ragland and Cecil J. South of the Black Widows. R. V. Parker and C. J. South were two of the early owner-operators.

Ken Scott of Selma set a track record of 9.2 on June 26, 1960, and night racing began on March 11, 1961. Lassiter Mountain worked with Helena Drag Strip, the other Jefferson County track, so the two never raced on the same day and could book big-name racers for back-to-back events. They even shared newspaper ads. The strip was for sale in 1961. Lewis Carden set a track record of 9.17 seconds on July 3, 1962. On April 7, 1963, Don Nicholson beat Phil Bonner two out of three in a match race, and Don Garlits was booked for October 20, 1963.

Around 1973 Tony Lee bought the track, renamed it Birmingham Dragway and put it under IHRA sanction. He replaced the old outhouses with restrooms. As Lee told it in 1976, several years earlier a male fan had run out of an outhouse screaming that a snake bit him. It was a green house snake that had bitten him on the rump when he sat down, and it scared him to death. Lee’s insurance didn’t cover snakebites, and that got him started on improvements. The Birmingham name stayed through at least 1991, and the track seems to have gone back to Lassiter Mountain until at least 1994. Lee owned it for part of that time.

The track, at 3936 Raceway Parkway in Mount Olive, ran as an eighth-mile strip until 2022. Carl and Angela Bartlett leased and ran it for four years starting in 2019 and chose not to renew in 2023. That year Marvin “Frogg” and Tessa Rogers leased the track, cleaned it up and started a racing program under IHRA sanction.