Santa Ana Drag Strip

With encouragement and support from the California Highway Patrol, the first documented timed, supervised drag races in history were held at the Orange County Airport in Santa Ana. C. J. ‘Pappy’ Hart, Creighton Hunter and Frank Stillwell founded the strip on $1,000 in start-up money. Races ran weekly from the first one on July 2, 1950. Through August 13 they were timed over 3/10 of a mile, and quarter-mile timing began on August 21, 1950. The promoters charged admission and entry fees and gave trophies in several classes. At the first race Calvin Rice won the stock body coupe class and Dean Moon won racing sedan. The Orange County Racing Association sponsored and ran the races that year. Best times in the first year came from Al Keys on Joe LeBlanc’s motorcycle, The Beauty, at 122.44 mph, and Otto Ryssman’s modified stripped sedan at 120.80 mph. Organized drag racing’s first fatal accident happened here on December 10, 1950, when Richard Gilbert’s car overturned near the finish line. He was the first of more than 450 drag racers who have died racing.

The Orange County Timing Association later ran the races, sponsored by the California Highway Patrol. Classes in 1954 included open gas, heavy gas, light gas, postwar gas, strip gas, gas rail, fourbanger, and heavy, strip and modified coupe, and the Howard Cam Special won often in postwar gas overhead. In June 1955 Lloyd Scott set a national record of 147 mph in his Bustle Bomb. On July 10, 1955, spectator Drew Williams, sitting in the bleachers forty feet away, was killed when a transmission exploded on Otto Ryssman’s car and a piece of metal struck him in the chest. On Sunday, August 12, 1956, the Red Henslee-Emory Cook rear-engined roadster from San Diego set a drag racing speed record of 157.15 mph, beating the record it had set the night before at Lions Drag Strip. The Gold Cup, first run in 1950 at the Santa Ana Blimp Base, became a yearly race at the Orange County Airport, usually in April, and the 1957 edition ran April 28. Art Chrisman, Don Yates, Calvin Rice and Joaquin Arnett all raced here regularly. Racing reportedly ended in July 1959 because of growing air traffic. The strip was just east of what is now the main runway at John Wayne Airport.