Paradise Drag Strip (Calhoun)
ActiveActive Still racing today.
Paradise is a historic Calhoun strip, originally built as a quarter-mile and later shortened.
- Track record of 4.43 seconds as of 2015
- Raced
- 1961-present
- State
- Georgia
- Raced on
- Built as a drag strip
- First race
- 1961
- Track
- 1/8 mile
- Address
- 500 Chatsworth Hwy 225 NE, Calhoun, GA
- People
- Otto Timms, builder (1961)
- Elevation
- 865 ft (264 m)
- Coordinates
- 34.54046, -84.92834
- Contact
- (770) 548-0304
Otto Timms built this strip in an old cotton field in 1961. In its first year, 23-year-old Virginia Quarles was driving a car with her husband Frank as passenger when it spun out of control just after leaving the line and crashed into spectators standing behind a wood and wire fence. Deward Lee Duncan, 23, of Chatsworth, Georgia, was killed and ten others were hurt. Frank Quarles said afterward that the car suddenly spun coming off the line and they didn’t know why. The track began as a quarter mile and was cut back to an eighth mile as speeds rose, which is the distance it still runs. The track record as of 2015 was 4.43 seconds.
Video
More in Georgia
- Closed No longer racing, but some of the track is still there. 13 Forks Dragstrip early 1960s
- Closed No longer racing, but some of the track is still there. Atlanta International Dragway (Commerce) 1976-2021
- Closed No longer racing, but some of the track is still there. Augusta International Speedway/Dragway (Hephzibah) 1960-63
- Closed No longer racing, but some of the track is still there. Bainbridge Dragway 1960
- Closed No longer racing, but some of the track is still there. Camp Wheeler Drag Strip (Macon) 1957-64?
- Closed No longer racing, but some of the track is still there. Double H Drag Strip (Blue Ridge) 1963-66
- Closed No longer racing, but some of the track is still there. Douglas Motorsports Park (Nicholls)
- Closed No longer racing, but some of the track is still there. Drag City (Ringgold) 1960-84
- Closed No longer racing, but some of the track is still there. Dublin Airport 1956
- Nothing left No longer racing, and nothing of the track remains. Forsyth County Drag Strip/Cumming Dragway 1962-73
- Status unknown Closed, but nobody has checked how much of the site survives, or the exact spot was never found. Gainesville Drag Strip 1955-56
- Closed No longer racing, but some of the track is still there. Hinesville Raceway Park 1997-2002