Rossville Drag Strip
ClosedClosed No longer racing, but some of the track is still there.
- Hurricane Connie damaged the strip during construction in 1955
- Raced
- 1956
- State
- Pennsylvania
- What's left
- You can still spot it in aerial photos, or broken pieces of the track surface remain.
- On the site today
- Woods
- Raced on
- Built as a drag strip
- Track
- 3,500 feet
- Surface
- Rolled clay
- Location
- A mile and a half east of Rossville
- People
- Ernest Gilbert, builder (1955-56)
- Carmen Desputhano, builder (1955-56)
- Pennsylvania Timing Association, planned operator
- Warrington Park Hot Rod Club, main construction help (1955-56)
- Elevation
- 510 ft (155 m)
- Coordinates
- 40.07146, -76.88680
Ernest Gilbert and Carmen Desputhano began building a rolled-clay drag strip 3,500 feet long and 90 feet wide, a mile and a half east of Rossville, at an estimated cost of $25,000. The Pennsylvania Timing Association was to run it under NHRA sanction. It was due to be finished by the end of August 1955, but damage from Hurricane Connie delayed it. The Warrington Park Hot Rod Club did most of the work to get it built. Newspapers said it was nearly done in late March 1956, though the builders hoped to raise enough money to pave it. To that end the Warrington Park club asked five York-area clubs to join in: Peerless Competition, Gent’s Roadster, Duces, York’s Little Stinkers and Asphalt Arabs. Pennsylvania racing historian Steve Bubb said the strip opened in 1956, but newspaper research turned up no reports of races there. Woods cover the site today.
More in Pennsylvania
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