"During the 50s and 60s, the sport of drag racing
exploded in popularity. In its early days, drag racing
had a class for everybody, from professional rails to 4
door sedans. As a participant sport, drag racing made
itself very accessible, and as a result, drag racing
facilities sprang up all over the country, some national
in scale and others very small and local. This was
great, for a while, but with the sprawl of suburbia and
various economic conditions like the growing expense of
racing over the last few decades we have lost hundreds
of drag racing facilities across the country. Many of
these were places of legend where the biggest names in
the sport got their start or ran some of their most
memorable passes. Others were relatively unknown, but
served a local area s needs for a safe place for local
speed addicts to run their cars. For whatever reason,
they are no longer in business, but evidence of their
former existence still remains. This book takes a look
at many of the lost quarter-mile tracks across the
country. Some of them are gone completely; paved over to
make room for housing developments or strip malls.
Others are ghostly remnants of what once was, offering a
sad and even eerie subject for the photographer. The
images are teamed with vintage shots of drag racing s
glory days, sharing what once was one of America s most
popular pastimes with the modern reality facing these
facilities today. For fans of drag racing s past, it s a
sobering and interesting study. The stories are true and
the photos are thought provoking, which makes this book
hard to put down as it ranges from Orange County to
Pittsburgh, Connecticut to Dallas, Louden, Chattanooga,
the Double H Drag Strip, Hudson Drag Strip, Southeast
International Dragway and other sites in this tour
through motor-racing's past.
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