13 replies to this topic

[HistoricMustang]

Believe this is the former Yellow River Dragstrip between Covington and Conyers, Georgia which some could say is in the Metropolitan Atlanta area. Please correct me if I am wrong. Currently it is what we refer to here in Georgia as a Trailer Park, elsewhere possibly could be called a Mobile Home Community.

Unable at this point to find any period correct aerial photographs.

Horrible day in racing took place here in 1969: http://www.motorspor...ircuit_a&n=1142





Henry

[JacnGille]

I spent many Sundays at the Yellow River strip as a youngster. We almost went that tragic day.

[Lotus23]

Henry/Jac, what were the particulars? I stopped by YR once, pre-1969, on a day when no racing was taking place.

[JacnGille]

A message board discussion can be found here:
http://www.hotrodder...sages/1068.html

A car left the track, killing a dozen spectators.

[HistoricMustang]

Originally posted by Lotus23
Henry/Jac, what were the particulars? I stopped by YR once, pre-1969, on a day when no racing was taking place.

Joel, on trips to Atlanta I always take a look to the left and think about how terrible it must have been. And, just wondering if the folks in the Mobile Home Community understand what took place at their doorsteps.

http://www.lawskills...se/ga/id/61548/

For years I associated the Richard Petty drag stip accident to be here but it was infact across town at Dallas.

From this Atlas link: http://www.atlasf1.c...iew/mirror.html

NASCAR's mortal enemy in stock car racing, USAC, was quick to point out to Chrysler that it was continuing to use the same rules it had in 1964 and the Plymouth and Dodge Hemi teams were welcome to compete on that circuit in 1965. Many did, including Paul Goldsmith, Bobby Isaac, and David Pearson. Richard Petty and Petty Enterprises went drag racing. In a Barracuda that they called "Outlawed," Petty attracted large crowds wherever his raced. Unfortunately, on 28 February 1965, the same day that a 100-miler was being run at the Asheville-Weaverville Speedway in Weaverville, North Carolina, Petty and "Outlawed" were at Southeastern Dragway in Dallas, Georgia. During a match race with Arnie Beswick, the Barracuda experienced transmission problems off the line. As Petty tried to find second gear, the car started to get loose. When Petty finally got it into second gear the car suddenly broke loose, turned towards the spectator area, and hit the embankment. The Petty Blue Barracuda vaulted the embankment, being launched almost straight up, which carried the car over the fence that was supposed to protect the spectators, and into the crowd. Seven people were injured when the Barracuda slammed into the people who had come to watch the match races. One of these suffered severe head injuries, but there was an eighth victim, Wayne Dye - an eight-year old from Austell, Georgia. He died of his injuries before he reached the hospital. Petty suffered light injuries in the violent crash, but the shock of the young boy's death stayed with him for years.

Henry

[McGuire]

There were dozens of little dragstrips like Yellow River and Dallas all over the South during the match-racing era, invariably with no safety features at all. There was usually only snow-fencing to separate the race cars from the spectators, while the cars were nearly as unsafe as the tracks. These places were just a ribbon of pavement cut through a hollow, where people materialized out of the woods and paid five bucks a head to watch the match racers... Dyno Don Nicholson, Ronnie Sox, Malcom Durham, Don Carlton, Phil Bonner, Hubert Platt, his brother Huston (it was his car that crashed at Yellow River) and a host of others. Guys would be paid $500 to $1000 in appearance money, pretty good cash for the time, more than you could make working for a living... and there were lots of side bets among guys standing around the starting line with thick wads of small dirty bills.

I got to see a few of these places as a young grease monkey and it left a lasting impression on me. I remember a track in Alabama where everyone seemed to be carrying a gun, including the young girl at the concession shack.

[Lotus23]

McGuire, you're absolutely right.

I attended my first organized drag race in '55 (shortly after the LeMans disaster), and the nonexistent safety standards of those early days make me wonder how anyone -- participant or spectator -- survived: in the late 50s and early 60s, we just paid our money and pulled up next to the dragstrip. Sitting on the hoods/fenders of our cars, we had nothing but air and a few feet of grass between ourselves and the racing.

NHRA had a lot to do with tightening up safety (remember their "Safety Safari"?), but at non-NHRA events, the safety issues lagged far behind.

If the tragedy hadn't happened at Yellow River, it was bound to have happened somewhere similar.

[HDonaldCapps]

As McGuire points out, these drag strips were places where, in retrospect, it is staggering that the death toll is as small as it is. I went to see more than a few of these -- wow, those names still mean something to some of us. The facilities for some of the match races at places such the back stretch at the Charlotte Speedway were little better. I recall standing behind the pathetic little fence and realizing that it would not stop diddly-squat. And then watching the match races, usually Lorenzen or another Ford driver versus a Mopar driver, Pearson always being game for a few extra dollars back then.

I didn't know about the Yellow River accident until long after it happened, being somewhat preoccupied with earning my McNamara Fellowship for Southeast Asian Studies at the time. A friend of mine in grad school, then stationed at Fort McPherson, was going to go, but had to fill in for someone on weekend duty and didn't go. The crash happened at a point near where he liked to watch the racing. He never attended another drag race after that. He told me this when I was given a wad of tickets to the drag races at Rockingham (remember when the NHRA and IHRA used to visit the Rock and Darlington?) and offered some of them to him -- his "Other Car" was a Sox/Martin-breathed upon vibrant, dayglow, puke-green Challenger, his everyday, go-to-school car being a Sunbeam Tiger II. Funny how I remember that all these years later.

I guess we not exactly the sharpest knives in the drawer back then.....

[McGuire]

Originally posted by HDonaldCapps

in retrospect, it is staggering that the death toll is as small as it is.

It's like they say, God really does look out for children and idiots. That can be the only way 50 people a week were not killed. But those little Southern tracks gave me some insight, I like to think, into what NASCAR must have been like not that many years earlier. These were good people who tried to wring a little income out of these places, but they were hard people. Hard, hard people. A dollar was a lot of money there. These were not folks to fool with.

However, I wouldn't want to suggest that primitive drag racing facilities were limited to the South... I grew up about five miles from "Greater Toledo Dragway," which in reality was one runway of what it is now Metcalf Field. The local promoter (a character named "Hot Rod Harry") rented one runway of the airport on Sundays. More than one pilot was caught out by the odd arrangement, and a few times the race program was interrupted for emergency landings.

Same deal as you describe -- the cars raced down the track-slash-runway with the spectators and competitors lined up right along the edge for the entire distance. No fence, no nothing. The hot pits (for dragsters and other vehicles that required pushing off) were actually right on the runway, off to one side on the top end. When the program ran behind schedule they would often line up the cars in the stock classes four wide. The only safety vehicle was a rusty old Cadillac ambulance that always required a jump-start, which at the time no one gave the slightest pause for thought.

So naturally, when I was around nine or ten I asked my folks if I could ride my bicycle out to the drag races. I grew up in a cars and racing family but at that time they had absolutely no truck with hot rodders, who my father regarded as no more than criminals. They told me no, those damned maniacs will run you over; the road to the airport was not safe for a kid on a bike. So I asked if I could walk the five miles and they said sure, never believing I would.

But of course I did -- I would have walked there on my hands -- and after a few weeks fellow maniacs would see me along the road and give me a ride. I had the time of my life... it was the beginning of what has been a gloriously misspent career.

[HistoricMustang]

Does anyone have an idea on how the name Yellow River came about?

Also, an indication of activity at this track and others in the Atlanta area: http://www.cottonowe...ton_picker.html

I am actually trying to locate archive aerial photographs of the Houston Brothers Dragstrip in the Western section of Metro Atlanta. No luck yet.

Henry

[JacnGille]

The Yellow River is only a half mile, or so, away.

[JacnGille]

Just came across this:

...the upcoming book, Atlanta Drag Racing: The Golden Years by David Dilbeck and Marvin T. Smith.

http://georgiadragra...-ga-shaker.html

[JacnGille]

This was just in Sunday's paper!
http://www.ajc.com/s...platt_0525.html

[HistoricMustang]

Originally posted by JacnGille
Just came across this:

...the upcoming book, Atlanta Drag Racing: The Golden Years by David Dilbeck and Marvin T. Smith.

http://georgiadragra...-ga-shaker.html

David has attended several of our annual events and is one of those "men on a mission".

This should be a good read.

Henry