Sanford Dragway

After two years of looking for a permanent drag strip, the New England Hot Rod Council got the use of an abandoned runway at Sanford Airport. The first official race was July 8, 1955, run by the Shaft Twisters club of Portland under New England Timing Association sanction. About a half dozen races that year each drew more than a thousand fans. On August 28, Ralph Bannister of Billerica, Massachusetts, had top speed of 112.5 mph in his Ford-powered dragster, and the season ended with the Northern New England Drag Race Championship on October 2, with 150 entries. The 1956 New England championship was held October 7. On October 13, 1957, Emil Nelson, who said he was the oldest active hot rodder in the country, ran 101.70 mph, the best speed of the meet by a Maine driver.

In 1959 Art Malone, driving for Don Garlits, set a national top speed record of 183.66 mph there. Sanford was an NHRA track around 1959-61, racing on the second and fourth Sundays. One racer saw his first drag race at Sanford in June 1964. Garlits was supposed to run a best-of-three against Malone, but a strong crosswind pushed Malone into the top-end timing lights in round one and wrecked his front end. ‘Sneaky’ Pete Robinson had shown up unannounced to challenge Malone for the No. 8 spot on the Drag News list and ran Garlits instead, using his disputed jack-stand starting system. Another fan at the same race dated it to June 18. He said Robinson took a big holeshot and ran about 8 flat at 177, and Garlits caught him at the lights with a 7.8 at 195. He also remembered that Eldon Sidebotham lent Malone a spare wheel after the first run, and that Malone hit the lights again on the second.

Garlits headlined a two-day race on June 18, 1966. An old-timer remembered the announcer calling his arrival, Garlits walking the track, then setting a strip record of 195 mph, with an ET he thought was around 6.5. He said Garlits liked Sanford for its long shutdown, since the runway was 5,000 feet long.