Walker Heights Drag Strip (Gastonia)
Status unknownStatus unknown Closed, but nobody has checked how much of the site survives, or the exact spot was never found.
- Paving and electric timing in 1963 lifted attendance from 400 to over 1,000
- Dockie Tripplet held the Super Stock record at 117 mph in a '63 Ford
- Raced
- 1955-68
- State
- North Carolina
- What's left
- The exact spot was never found. If it's on the map, the pin only marks the general area.
- Raced on
- Built as a drag strip
- First race
- July 19, 1959
- Track
- 1,600 feet
- Surface
- Oiled dirt, paved with asphalt in 1963
- Location
- About four miles from Gastonia on the Dallas-Cherryville Highway (then Highway 277, now 279), five miles west of Dallas crossroads
- People
- Gastonia Gear Grinders, builders and operators (1955-59)
- W. T. Queen, co-owner and manager (1963)
- Russ Riner, co-owner (1963)
- Russ Reimer, co-owner
- James McDaniel, owner (1966)
- Elevation
- 978 ft (298 m)
- Coordinates
- 35.35536, -81.25030
The Gastonia Gear Grinders car club formed in 1953, and in January 1955 it started grading a drag strip four miles south of Gastonia on York Road. It isn’t known whether that strip was finished or used then, and newspapers said nothing more for several years. On July 18, 1959, the Gastonia Gazette reported that the Gear Grinders would open their new Walker Heights Drag Strip the next day, in the same general area described in 1955. Directions had drivers take the Dallas-Cherryville Highway, then Highway 277 and now 279, about four miles out of Gastonia. It may have been a couple of miles east of Cherryville. The strip was oiled dirt, and a 1963 Gazette article described it as full of ruts and big holes, with terrible dust during races. It was insured and raced every Sunday. On August 9, 1959, the season’s biggest crowd watched Leon Cloninger upset Zeke Harder’s ‘59 Pontiac for top eliminator.
In 1963 the track got two asphalt lanes and electric timing, and attendance rose from 400 to over 1,000 per event. W. T. Queen, co-owner with Russ Riner, managed it that year, and Russ Reimer is also named as a co-owner. Dockie Tripplet of Boone held the Super Stock record at 117 mph in his ‘63 Ford. The shutdown was lengthened for safety in 1964. On September 19, 1964, the owner let the Ku Klux Klan hold a rally there, where 600 robed Klansmen burned a 30-foot cross beside the track. James McDaniel owned it in 1966.
Racer Walt McIntyre recalled that the track wasn’t fenced or locked, so racers went there after hours, and once Bobby Barr came up the track the wrong way after a run, couldn’t stop, and jumped the highway into a state gravel pile. Another racer heard that Bobby Roberts won there and, with the crowd ready to go after him and his crew, drove past his trailer yelling for them to meet him down the road, leaving his prize money and trophy behind.
In 1975 the Gastonia Jaycees planned a fair on the old strip, which newspapers placed five miles west of Dallas crossroads, but moved it to the Gastonia Fairgrounds for lack of space. In 1976 the owner advertised the 1,600-foot track and its 63 acres for a long-term lease.
