Little Bonneville Drag Strip (San Jose)

The Santa Clara Timing Association paved the old dirt San Jose Airport on South King Road, a field dating to the early 1930s, and began holding races every two weeks on a half-mile asphalt track. The work cost about $20,000. The strip was NHRA sanctioned and managed by Frank Wright. Some old racers remember it at Reid-Hillview Airport, about a half mile to the east, but newspapers of the time all place it at the San Jose Airport on King Road. The field was used mostly for flight training, so on race weekends the airport closed and the planes were flown over to Reid-Hillview.

The first race was on March 13, 1955. Organizers expected 300 entries and gave trophies to nineteen class winners and the top eliminator. A 1954 Hot Rod Magazine item had mentioned a new, unnamed San Jose strip set to open March 14, 1954 under the same club, though it isn’t certain which strip it meant. On April 14, 1957, Pete Ogden of Concord set the track record at 133.12 mph in his Chrysler-powered roadster. Jay Cheatham of Sunnyvale soon edged it to 133.15 mph, then raised it to 134.12 mph on September 15 and to 141.50 mph on July 20, 1958. He closed the 1958 season, the strip’s last, with another record of 142.85 mph. Cheatham was killed in March 1959 at the U.S. Fuel and Gas Championships in Bakersfield.