Manchester Dragway/D & J Dragway

Incorporation papers for Manchester Dragway were filed on June 4, 1965, though it may have started earlier. Little is known beyond the memories of old-timers. One man asked his father, nearly 80, whether Manchester ever had a race track. The father said yes, from when he was very young. You turned near where the park and hospital are now, though none of that was there then and the roads have since moved. Back then you took a left on Green Brier Road and a right on Dead Engine Hill, climbed the steep hill, and the track was on a flat at the top of the mountain. He remembered sitting on the porch at 17 or 18 in Pennington Holler, now Pennington Hill, a long way from the track, and still hearing the pipes open up.

Another racer said a friend took his stock Chevelle there, reached the final against the local hot shot in a super stocker, and was told by the sheriff never to come back. Others recalled slicks getting slashed in the staging lanes and cars having to be pulled up the hill just to race. One person said the strip sat on the flat top of a strip mine. On September 19, 1978, Ledford Jackson filed incorporation papers for D & J Dragway in Manchester. It seems Norwood Garrison and five others may have sold the track, which then ran under the new name.