Owensboro/Windy Hollow Raceway Park

Hal Miller moved his eighth-mile strip from Owensboro to the Windy Hollow Fairgrounds on Windy Hollow Road in 1970. Hal and Deanna Miller also owned Windy Hollow Lake there, plus a store, a restaurant, a dirt oval and riding stables. That was more than the family could run, so in 1973 they leased the strip to Dallas Jones, who kept it through the 1987 season. Jones renamed it Owensboro Raceway Park, affiliated with NHRA, and replaced class racing with bracket racing. Gary Brantley was killed racing there on August 21, 1976. A track record of 5.23 was set in 1986.

Jones bought the Beech Bend Park strip in 1987 and gave up the Windy Hollow lease. The Millers’ daughter, Evelyn ‘Rooster’ Miller McCarty, ran the strip from 1988 to 1993. In 1989 Chuck Baird of Assumption, Illinois, ran 4.542 at 151.49 mph, the first pass over 150 at the track. The next year he lowered it to 4.465 at 156.81, still the ET bracket record. The name changed to Windy Hollow Raceway Park in 1990.

Francis Libs ran the strip in 1994-95, and McCarty came back from 1996 to 2004. In 1996 Bill Bartkus became the first to top 200 mph there with a 218 mph run in a jet car. Randy and Kim Booker promoted it in 2005, Phillip Oakley ran it from 2006 through 2011, and Johnathan Jones had it in 2012. With no operator, only one race ran in 2013. Curtis Howard reopened it in 2014, but it may have closed after that apart from occasional races in 2017 and 2018.