Beeline Drag Races

During the late 1950’s and the 1960’s, drag racing was a popular sport. One of the venues for drag racing was Beeline Dragway. Located on the Beeline highway, just a few miles North of McDowell road, it was in operation for about 3 decades.

A view from the early 60’s. The old control tower is shown.

The sign along the highway Teeshirt logo

A couple years ago, while driving along the Beeline, I stopped to see what was still left from the original track, which closed in the early 90’s. Here’s an aerial view I found on the internet.

Not much left, but the control building.

View down the strip, compare with picture on top of page 2, above. The asphalt has been reclaimed. There were several fence sections across the track, probably installed while there was still asphalt, in an attempt to discourage use of the track, after it was abandoned.

View of the parking lots, taken from the roof deck of the control tower.

Rear view of the control tower. The red and brown stripes were added, I believe, when Motorola took over the tower for a while to do some kind of communications testing sometime in the 90’s, after the strip had closed.

Some sort of tracks that were probably added by Motorola, during their radio testing work.

Front view of the tower building. It appears that Motorola had blocked in most of the windows on the second floor level.

Interior view of the second floor. Lots of bees buzzing around, so I didn’t go in. The locked door had already been pried open.