Tennessee Valley Dragway (Kingsport)

J. B. Tiller, who also owned Coeburn Raceway in Virginia, and his son Travis built this strip for $90,000, three miles east of Kingsport just south of U.S. 11W (East Stone Drive) and the old Beason Well Road. Newspapers said it was going in beside a private airfield, on the airfield’s north side next to Reedy Creek, but it’s unknown whether the airfield was ever built. Plans called for a strip 3/4 mile long and 40 feet wide, a paved return road, a paved 400-by-800-foot pit area and stands for 1,500, with racing on Sundays. Construction was well along in early March, with asphalt due on March 8. As it neared completion, eighty residents of Beechcliff Estates, about a quarter-mile south, organized to stop it. The strip was outside Kingsport’s city limits, so the city had no power to halt construction, and the neighbors began a years-long effort to shut it down. It opened on May 30-31, 1965, with only half a mile paved because of bad weather. Kingsport racer Shirl Greer won the $1,000 Super Stock purse, and 3,000 spectators watched on Sunday, May 30. A constant problem was people parking along the highway to watch without paying, and state troopers regularly ticketed them. Legal and financial troubles dogged the track until it closed in 1969.