Ted Edwards Skyway Airport Dragway/Houston Bros. Drag Strip (Fairburn)

Ted Edwards, born in Maine, won several national dirt-track motorcycle titles and promoted races at Lakewood Speedway. With co-owner Ernest D. Troutman he started drag racing on the runway of his airstrip in Fairburn, which is recognized as Georgia’s first permanent drag strip. Very early on it was called Fairburn Speedway. The first race, sponsored by the Atlanta Racing Association, ran on June 13, 1954, and newspapers made a fuss over the powder puff race on the program. Kenny Miller of Fairburn won often in 1954 and 1955. The 1955 season opened on April 3, more than a hundred cars were expected for the race on Sunday, September 4, 1955, and Bo Jones of Birmingham had set a track record of 91.29 mph at an earlier meet. Julius Hughes managed the track for Edwards in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

Racers remembered a small airstrip with racing on Friday and Saturday evenings before dark, and not a lot of shutdown room. When a plane needed to land or take off, the racing stopped until it was clear. One called the sixties the best years, with ‘55 Chevys in modified production, gassers, a few altereds and super stockers, and once even a jet car. In 1964 the track became Houston Bros. Drag Strip, a name it kept until it closed. A racer who ran there from about 1967 to the end raced Fairburn on Friday and Saturday and Dallas on Sunday until he got tired of it. He said Houston oiled the return road to keep the dust down, though Oscar Roberts, Jabo Elam and the Houston Bros. Corvette came back down the strip itself. On Monday, September 6, 1971, with about a thousand people watching the races, a small plane made a forced landing at the strip and the two people aboard were slightly hurt.

The track’s exact years haven’t been confirmed. The strip is now South Fulton Airport on the southwest edge of Fairburn, shown on a 1983 topographic map as South Fulton Skyport. Oddly, 1979 issues of National Dragster put Red’s Drag Strip in Fairburn, though newspapers place Red’s in Dallas, Georgia.