Petersburg Municipal Airport/Eastern Dragway

In 1956 the Petersburg city council let the Petersburg Rodders Club drag race on an unused taxi strip at the airport on Route 460 south of the city, every first and third Sunday, once the club got insurance. The council kept the right to revoke permission at any time. The strip was so short that runs could only be timed over a fifth of a mile, with a few hundred feet to stop. In late August the club was still working on insurance, and it’s not known whether any races happened that year. In October 1957, since the taxi strip wasn’t long enough, the council approved the runway farthest from the administration building, which ran northeast-southwest for 3,500 feet. The Rodders would run the races, and the strip was named Eastern Dragway after Eastern Dragway, Inc., the group headed by Edgar A. Jett, Sr. that started it.

The first supervised racing was set for March 30, 1958, on what was described as a mile-long taxi strip 165 feet wide, and 700 people came to watch trial runs on March 16. In May 1958 Bill Stoinoff set an unofficial A/MR world ET record of 8.9 seconds in “The Golden Mood.” In early June the promoters moved racing from Sunday to Saturday, and average crowds fell from over 2,000 to about 400. Racers came from Norfolk, Williamsburg and the rest of the Tidewater area. Joe Tucci of Quantico set a top speed record of 140.40 MPH in July 1959. The strip was NHRA sanctioned by 1960. Sunday racing had drawn criticism since the start, and after an accident and a fight on August 7, 1960, the council banned it as of September 1, 1960. Saturday racing continued until 1961. The city paid the dragway $1,250, a year and a quarter’s rent, to give up its lease, which ran to 1963.