Thunderbolt Raceway (Orange Park)

Drag races ran on the northern east-west asphalt runway of Fleming Island Naval Outer Landing Field, a World War II airfield on U.S. 17 ten miles north of Green Cove Springs. Three Green Cove Springs men, Burch Stump, Ben Zeliner and Ed Taylor, started the races. They were held every Sunday at first, then on the first and third Sundays from later in 1961. A tall steel thunderbolt stuck in the ground marked the entrance road, which led west from U.S. 17 into the woods.

Many big names ran there, including Don Garlits, Connie Kalitta, Chris Karamesines, Don Prudhomme, Art Arfons and Pete Robinson. At one night race Garlits blew his engine at the finish, slid on his own oil and went backwards through a fence into a field.

Mike McInnis was eleven in 1965 when he talked his father into taking him to his first drag race at Thunderbolt, after hearing an ad on Jacksonville’s WAPE for an Eddie Schartman versus Shirl Greer match race. He remembered no guardrails, a few bare bulbs strung between poles in the pits, and an Army surplus searchlight on a trailer aimed down the track from behind the starting line. The crowd stood within 20 or 30 feet of the cars, and he thought Greer won two out of three. Another racer recalled two WWII surplus searchlights that went to full power when the cars staged, and a salvaged traffic light hung across the track in place of a Chrondek tree. A recreational soccer park and an elementary school on the old site now carry the track’s name.