Pensacola Drag Strip (Klondike Road)

In 1956, members of the Northwest Florida Timing Association formed Pensacola Drag Strip, Inc. and leased land from Fred L. Vannoy southwest of Klondike Road and Detroit Boulevard for an eighth-mile drag strip. Bill Creel was president and treasurer of the corporation’s board, and stock sales raised $30,000 to build it. Incorporation papers were filed January 7, 1957. The 60-foot-wide strip ran northeast to southwest for a half mile in all, the first quarter mile paved with asphalt and the last quarter asphalt-treated. The first race was on Sunday, February 10, 1957, and races ran weekly on Sundays after that. Early ads called it Pensacola Drag Strip, but racers called it Klondike Dragway. On April 7, 1957, 500 people watched 75 racers, and Bill Powell of Mobile won on his Triumph motorcycle.

A go-kart road course was built next door in 1959 and began night races in 1960, advertised as putt-nik kart racing. The first lighted night drag race was Saturday, July 30, 1960. On Sunday, June 11, 1961, the strip held the first annual Fiesta of Five Flags championship drag races, offering 43 classes, with 85 entries running in 28. Bill Aydelott won the $50 top eliminator prize in his dragster at 4.9 seconds, and Jan Cardwell, Miss Pensacola Drag Strip of 1961, handed out the trophies and prize money. In 1962 the track tried other draws, like a twist contest, and the Fiesta races became a three-day event. In 1963 it did all it could to bring in racers and fans. Hubert Platt drove Don Nicholson’s 409 Chevy at a two-day event on March 2-3, Phil Bonner appeared, Nicholson made exhibition runs on April 6, and every driver got a participation trophy. The 1963 Fiesta races drew Nicholson, Platt, Phil Carrol and Al Hodges, and a two-day Pensacola Invitational ran August 17-18. Don Garlits made exhibition runs on April 26 and May 17, 1964. At the three-day Fiesta championships in 1964, W. L. Vickrey won Super Stock in his ‘64 Dodge, and more than 1,200 fans watched 130 racers on the final day.

By the time new incorporation papers were filed on August 26, 1966, it was called Pensacola Drag Raceway, and races were timed over 1,250 feet. On Saturday, September 17, 1966, Buck Smith’s Quarterbender B/S beat Ted Walker’s Would You Believe GTO in a featured grudge race. Racing moved to Sundays in October, with more than 75 cars on October 2, and on October 9 Quarterbender met Ken Simpson’s A/S Chevy II in a best three-of-five match race. Kenny, who raced there in the late 1960s, remembered E. J. Potter, the Michigan Madman, failing to shut down his Chevy V-8-powered Harley and going through the sand bed into the four-foot pines past the end of the strip, so far that it took two wreckers hooked together to pull the bike out. The February 1968 Hot Rod listed the strip under NHRA sanction. J. R. Mills managed the track that year, and it opened on the first Saturday night in April.