Abandoned drag srtip east of Phoenix

[Salvatore]

Thanks Bill. I remember coming in off the main road and pulling up to the airport restaurant and hanger area. I believe I was on the right piece of black top that was used for the drag strip. Good picture of Panella Bros probably with Ken Dondero driving ( may be a little early for him) the gasser! Guys around here that ran the very early Pro Stock circuit used to go out west to test and tune in the winter months. It was tough for them coming back east and running 2 tenths slower because of the air and the sea level difference. Fremont truly was the place to go fast!

[x Baldwin Motion]

whats left of westhampton according to GEarth, they have an old overlapping a new satelite photo.

[Woj]

With all this high-tech detective work going on here, I thought I'd share an experience I had last year while flying a low-level practice mission here in Ohio in a C-130.

Doing my part to read the map while flying at 500 feet, I usually take note of out-of-the-way junk yards. We (the crew) were south east of Mansfield, Ohio when I noticed a junk yard; I asked the navigator to mark the position (latitude and longitude). He did that and handed me the lat/long after the mission.

For the heck of it, I put the lat/long into google maps: (N40 34.56 W082.41.54).

Result: http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&q=...sa=N&tab=wl

It plotted the location, then I hit the "search nearby" button and entered "auto wrecking". It came up with Beck's Auto Wrecking as the closest location. I then hit the satellite view and there it was.

I haven't yet driven out to the place, but checked with some folks that I know that live nearby and they confirmed that they still have some "old stuff" in the yard.

Maybe I'll get there one of these days. It is about 1 1/2 hours from home.

Bill, nice detective work locating the Bee Line drag strip. What a great thread.

Phil Woj.

[427TJ]

Phil, you remind me of me. I love looking at stuff from the air.

[Dog427435]

Bill - What a great thread - Love the aerial views of our disappearing Americana!

[427TJ]

Now I KNOW you could make a considerable contribution to this thread Glenn. Jump in and lets' see how long we can keep this rolling!

[Xplantdad]

Can I play???

Here is a picture of the now defunct OCIR (Orange County International Raceway) in SoCal. My Nova was there quite a bit

Nice aerial view...




And here's what it looks like now...with sort of the same view...you can just make out where the end of the track was...at the top of the picture in the dirt area




And here's a wider shot with what looks like MCAS El Toro in the upper right?

[Xplantdad]

And who can forget Lions...

Here's opening day in 1955




And now it's a container storage lot

[427TJ]

So that's where OCIR was, next to El Toro. El Toro is just sitting there nowadays awaiting another series of malls/shopping/condos/box warehouses to replace it. Too bad one of those runways can't be used for drags.

Ah yes, Lions. I have a great DVD history of Lions and I wish I could have been there and done that.

[Salvatore]

Keep em coming! How about Santa Ana, Inyokern and the famous Irwindale??