San Gabriel Valley Drag Strip/Dragway (Baldwin Park)

The San Gabriel Valley’s first drag strip opened on May 6, 1956 in Baldwin Park, just east of Temple City at the head of the San Gabriel River. The 40-acre site was on Rivergrade Road, half a mile below Arrow Highway. The 3,500-foot strip, 3,000 feet of it paved, cost $30,000. Robert E. Lee was track director, and Berk Kellogg and Bob Sohus owned it. On opening day 4,250 spectators watched Art Chrisman set a dragster track record of 142.73 mph, and tennis champion Pancho Gonzales won his class at 107.52 mph in his Cad-powered ‘34 coupe. NHRA held a West Coast regional championship on May 26-27, 1956, won by Kenny Arnold at 137.40 mph and 10.69. At the West Covina Jaycees’ Dragorama on July 4, 1956, nearly 4,000 people watched 222 entries, and the Armstrong-Richer dragster from El Monte set a track record of 148.02 mph. Richer raised it to 150 mph four days later.

Roger Stinson lost control of his 1937 English Austin at about 110 mph, was thrown out when it rolled and died of his injuries on December 23, 1956. Two more fatal crashes came eight days apart in 1958. Those deaths and newspaper editorials led the strip to allow only street cars, stock cars and roadsters, barring dragsters and other fast cars and cutting speeds a lot. When the nearby riverbed was turned into a flood channel, the strip had to move, and a second San Gabriel strip was built in Irwindale. Writing in Drag Sport Illustrated in 1965, Eskimo Gudger remembered the old strip as short, narrow and simple, with only the strip itself paved and so dusty at times you could lose your car, but busy from the very start.