Toledo Municipal Airport

The 1955 Hot Rod Annual (page 10) mentions a drag race in Toledo in 1954. After seven years of talks with city officials, the first NHRA-sanctioned race ran in July 1958 on the runway of the old municipal airport, Metcalf Field, now Toledo Executive Airport. The Northwestern Ohio Timing Association leased the old airport from the city for $900 and ran the races on a runway 150 feet wide and 3,800 feet long. Art Arfons set the track record with a 10-second run in the Green Monster. The January 1959 Hot Rod carried a photo story on the first season. Early on it was called Vettesville Dragway, and later, around 1964, Greater Toledo Dragway. Rent for 1959 was $6,000.

In 1960 the city got two bids to run the strip, the larger from Detroit Dragway, Inc. On May 8, 1960, Glass City Dragway, affiliated with Detroit Dragway, held the season opener with Jack Pfeifer as racing director, expecting about 250 entries and trophies in forty divisions. Arfons once ran his Allison-engined dragster there. The strip’s flagman, filling in at the start, later learned he wasn’t supposed to be out there when the Green Monster ran, and never forgot the noise, the smoke and the shaking ground. On November 1, 1964, Jay Howell in the Little Red Wagon A/FX pickup beat Roger Lindamood’s Color Me Gone Dodge three straight in a best-of-five match race, with a best of 10.55 at 127 mph. A two-day season championship on November 7-8, 1964, paid $3,500, cost $1 per car to enter, and had George Montgomery booked in his A/GS Willys. In the mid-1960s, a fan with a pit pass watched E. J. Potter launch his Bloody Mary motorcycle and leave a black stripe the full length of the track. The 1968 Swedish magazine Start & Strip listed it as Toledo Dragway.