Riverside Dragway/Jackson Dragway (Pearl)

James Alford built this strip in Pearl and opened it in 1972. It sat on the east side of Jackson along the north side of Interstate 20, with the staging lanes beside the I-20 right of way, the track running north, and a hilly pit and return road on the right. Highway Patrol cars often parked along I-20 all day on race days. Cary Busby sold the track to Bob Heard around 1976. In June 1980 the state shut it down for unpaid franchise taxes, and it stayed closed through at least 1981. Charles Rogers bought it and reopened it in 1982 as Jackson Dragway. Don Garlits match raced Keith Craig’s T/FD from Tulsa that year, possibly the race where Zack Methvin met Garlits and got his pit pass autographed. The Winston Rebel Funny Car Nationals ran October 23-24, 1982.

A racer who ran there through its whole life said it was an NHRA Division 2 or 4 track most years with a yearly points meet, until Norman ‘Moose’ Pearah took over and let it close. He remembered it running into the ’90s. The Pearl Public School District owned the land and leased it to the strip, and in 1987 the district sued to end the lease so it could build a high school there. Pearl High School now covers most of the old strip, though some remnants survive at the west end.