Spartanburg Dragway (Roebuck)

Spartanburg Drag Strip opened on March 17, 1962. It raced Friday nights when Greer Drag Strip was running and Saturdays when it wasn’t, and Bob Burchette was the first promoter. Paul Clayton held a grand opening on March 21, 1964. The strip was off Canaan Road, off U.S. Highway 221 south of Spartanburg, just north of Ready Creek, and Bob Osiecki was general manager that year. In 1967 it ran on the first and third Saturday nights from March through October, under NHRA sanction by then if not earlier, with Bill Garland as race director. Late on Saturday night, September 29, 1973, after the track had closed following a race, three motorcyclists began racing around it, and 25-year-old Ralph Howard Johnson of Gastonia, North Carolina, was killed when he lost control and hit a fence. From 1976 to 1979 it was called Spartanburg International Dragway. Clayton sold it in 1978 to Bob Rogers, who owned an automobile leasing business in Greenville. Rogers paid for an expensive remodel and brought the track under full IHRA sanction for the first time. In 1983 Roger Millikin and a group bought the property to develop a country club and golf course. The course went in south of Ready Creek and the strip, and the strip has largely gone back to nature.