Old Dominion Speedway (Manassas)

In 1952 Al Gore and his brothers bought the old Longview Speedway, a flat dirt track in Manassas. They regraded it, paved the 3/8-mile oval with asphalt, upgraded the grandstands and built new facilities, and opened it in July 1954. At some point they also built a 2,300-foot asphalt drag strip, which hosted racing after July 1954 and before September 1955. Newspapers of the time don’t say exactly when. A widely printed Associated Press story in September 1955 said the owners hoped to lengthen it to half a mile. Online sources say it began in 1953 as an eighth-mile dirt strip, but that hasn’t been confirmed and the AP story contradicts it. One fan dated it to the fall of 1954. Some people claim it was the nation’s first purpose-built drag strip, but the evidence points to one built in Colorado Springs in 1952.

Races ran every week. An ad for championship drag races on October 19, 1958, promised hot cars from all over the East Coast, with electric clocks for every class winner. Little else has been found after that. As housing crept closer, noise complaints led the owners to stop racing in 2012 and look for a new site.