US 30 Dragway (Merrillville)

Newspapers said the new U.S. 30 Dragway held its first race on September 15, 1957, describing a 400-foot paved strip with divided lanes, reportedly sanctioned by the National Timing Association, which was based at the strip. A Hammond Times article a few weeks later said Sunday racing would start at the new strip on October 6, 1957, so the September opener may have been postponed. Some early 1957 ads just called it U.S. Dragway. It was near Merrillville, about three blocks north of U.S. Highway 30 and Broadway, north of Crown Point on Goodrich Road, and the Northern Indiana Timing Association ran the races.

Bill Holz, a Drag News columnist, visited in late 1958. He described a strip about 50 miles from Chicago, built like a turnpike several feet above the ground, with two twenty-foot lanes split by an island, a 4,000-foot length and a paved return road well away from the track. It had built-in scales, a two-car garage for protests and repairs, grandstands for 2,500, a timing stand 40 feet up, and a heated clubhouse where racers could sleep, bench race, shower and use lockers.

On June 21, 1959, the strip held a benefit race for the Thornton, Illinois, volunteer fire department. At the start of the 1960 season the track posted $10,000 cash for the first dragster to top 200 mph there. Two bad accidents within a month in 1960 led a neighboring farmer to threaten a complaint against the track. On August 4, 1963, John Montgerard’s clutch exploded and knocked out his steering and brakes, and his dragster went through the retaining cables into the pit area at about 50 mph. The car burst into flames, spraying many of the injured with burning gasoline. One man was killed and ten spectators were hurt, and the car stopped just short of bleachers holding 2,000 people.

The AHRA Summer Nationals on June 12-14, 1964, saw numerous records and a fatal crash, when Howard Wysong veered off the track near the finish in Lee Pendleton’s aircraft-engined “Spitfire II” dragster. Jim Thornton of Royal Oak, Michigan, ran 132.353 mph in a ‘64 Ramcharger Dodge, thought to be the fastest super stock speed ever, and Bobby Vodnik broke Don Garlits’s strip record with 191.48 mph. Garlits called the track extremely narrow. After almost three decades of racing, little is left but two strips of weedy pavement just west of 7920 Clay Street in Hobart.