Closed dragstrips

ocdart said

Raced on: Old Irwindale and Orange County International Raceway (OCIR)
Crewed at: Famoso (Bakersfield) and Los Angeles County Raceway (LACR/Palmdale)



^^^ Although the former center of the hot rodding world, the population and the value of land for housing, commercial and industrial use is the reason there are no local dragstrips. It's the same reason for the demise of all other racing venues in the area, including what were the outstanding Indy/NASCAR oval tracks in Ontario and Fontana.

Click to expand...

The new Irwindale was built in a city of 500 people, 99% industrial, next to a giant hole in the ground, and Fontana was built on condemned contaminated land from the old Kaiser steel plant. Both were about the only practical place for a race track, and both the dragstrips just happened to be there, in the far corner, cause of a decent sized parking lot for the roundy-round tracks.
And STILL they managed to disappear.
OCIR was sold to build a housing development (as was riverside) until they found out they couldn't build there because of the airport glide path. It's now just a weed covered field.... and has been for 40 years.