Oak Hill Downs Speedway (Austin)

Archie Patton built a dirt oval and a paved drag strip on his land in Oak Hill. A recent Oak Hill Gazette article puts the tracks about where Freescale is today, near the duck pond between Freescale and 290-71. Ads in the 1950s placed it six miles west of Austin on the Fredericksburg Highway (Highway 290), and a 1983 newspaper article put the strip north of 290 and east of the Texas Highway 71 “Y” off Patton Ranch Road. The oval began as a horse track in the 1940s. In 1950 Patton started promoting motorcycle and stock car races on it, and midgets ran there in 1951.

In late September 1952 the Terrapins car club arranged to drag race on a half-mile straightaway of the dirt oval. After a members-only test on September 28, one of the first public races came on October 5, 1952, with 25 cars, and races were to follow every Sunday afternoon. On October 19 the San Antonio Road Runner Club and the Austin Terrapin Club raced each other after sitting down to a picnic together. The Terrapins gave $153 from a November 8, 1953, race to the United Fund. On Sunday, June 20, 1954, the Kapitol Katz Motorcycle Club put on quarter-mile and half-mile drag races for about 1,000 riders in town for the two-day Texas Gypsy Tour.

The first NHRA-sanctioned drag race at Oak Hill Downs was held on dirt on September 9, 1956. Patton said he would pave the strip if the gate was good, and he paved it a section at a time as money came in. By late 1957 races ran every other Sunday. In 1961 the program grew to include horse racing alongside the drags, and in 1962 the strip started going by Oak Hill Drag Strip. Its last season was 1967.