Red's Drag Strip/Southeastern International Dragway (Dallas)

Marvin “Red” Jones opened Red’s Dragstrip on July 4, 1955, according to a 2011 Dragzine feature. The first surface was a 1,000-foot strip of poorly mixed tar, gravel and cheap asphalt. Soon after, it became the return road and a better quarter-mile asphalt track was built beside it. One racer remembered a steep uphill approach to the starting line that took a line lock or very good heel-and-toe work. In 1963 Charles Hardy ran the track as Dallas Drag Strip, and ads for the October 13, 1963, race promised musical trophies to every class winner. On March 16, 1964, Don Nicholson ran a quick 11.12 in his ‘64 fiberglass Mercury Comet Marauder station wagon.

On February 28, 1965, stock car champion Richard Petty was match racing his Hemi-powered 1965 Cuda against Arnie Beswick when a broken front suspension sent the car into the crowd. An 8-year-old boy was killed and seven people were hospitalized. Petty, in shock, had what was left of the car buried on his property so nobody would ever see it again.

NHRA sanctioned the track in 1966. Rising speeds led to an eighth-mile distance in the 1970s, and a full renovation in the mid-1990s gave it a concrete racing surface. Gene Fuller took over as manager and promoter in 1997. The last race ran on December 11, 2005, after half a century of drag racing. The track was at 1787 East Paulding Drive in Dallas and was sometimes just called Dallas Drag Strip. Oddly, 1979 issues of National Dragster list Red’s Drag Strip in Fairburn, though newspaper records place it in Dallas.