Riverside Drag Strip (Proctorville)

This track, three miles east of Chesapeake on Route 7, was open by 1964, and Paul Wireman owned it. One local remembered playing in his yard on opening night when a jet car ran, and thinking something had blown up. An old-timer recalled the cornfield at the end of the strip, where corn flew when brakes failed, and fishing in the creek behind the starting line. Eugene Gahm of Lucasville won top eliminator both days on May 24-25, 1964, with a best of 160 mph and 9.51 in his dragster. A big funny car meet on November 6, 1966, paid $1,000 to win. In 1967 Wireman built a quarter-mile stock car oval beside the strip. On August 27, 1976, Greg Jude, 17, of Chesapeake was electrocuted when he touched a shorted piece of machinery while unloading limestone for a construction company working at the strip. The track’s exact years aren’t known. It reportedly had to close because of the noise, sitting directly across the Ohio River from St. Mary’s Hospital in Huntington, West Virginia.