Vernalis Speedway

Drag races were held on one of the two long runways of the old Vernalis Naval Auxiliary Airfield, fourteen miles west of Modesto, which dated to 1943. Richard Hector recalled that racing started informally on weekends in the early 1970s and later became a real business with a proper track. It never drew the big NHRA dragsters but was a big draw in the valley, and every Sunday hundreds of hot rods and trucks towing dragsters headed down Gaffery Road to the old base. By 1980 it had shut down and agricultural businesses took over, spreading hundreds of truckloads of cannery waste on the strip, and he said the smell and flies were unbearable for a couple of miles around. On August 16, 1970, Alan Monahan was killed racing his Henry J D/G car. Unsafe track conditions were judged one of the causes, and racing stopped while improvements were made. Newspaper race listings called it Vernalis Speedway, and a 1971 article called the Vernalis Drag Strip world famous, which is probably a stretch. Racing may have started before 1970.