Richmond Dragway

Little is known about this strip beyond the fact that it existed and is gone. It ran on the old Port Richmond Airfield, next to the Richmond Speedway dirt track.

A racer who ran there in 1963, at 15, brought a ‘56 Chevy wagon and his ‘55 Studebaker pickup with a 289 Studebaker engine. Racers did their burnout going down the track, then backed up to the line. He forgot to put the pickup in low, revved it to about 5,000 and dropped the clutch when the flag fell. Spectators stood about three feet behind the cars back then, and by the time he stopped he had four men in the bed. The other car was long gone, so someone ran down the driver and talked him into coming back. In low gear this time, he lost by a car length to a new ‘63 1/2 Ford Falcon Sprint convertible with a 260 V8 and four-speed, black on black. Someone else said a friend had home movies of the place showing two single-lane strips side by side with grass in between, and that it looked scary.