Dragway 42 in West Salem, Ohio is a really interesting case. The place was opened for 50+ years before being sold to the Matcham family who had plans to revamp and improve the facility. Their plans for a remodel turned into one of the most amazing full-blown construction projects in the recent history of the sport. While the facility is on the same physical ground as the old track, the entire place is new from top to bottom. The whole property was reworked with a fleet of Earthmoving equipment and it has been a multiple year project which has cost an incredible sum of money.
The family is motivated to get the track open and operating this spring as weather delays and other issues slowed their rebuilding. They are slated to hold an IHRA sportsman national event this year and it’ll be a landmark day for the track when that happens.
So we were not thinking about Dragway 42 when we stumbled upon a cool video. Sometimes when we’re researching items for this blog we get off track and start to discover something great that we had not even planned to do. This time, we found a lot of old films shot in 1962 to 1971 at Dragway 42 in West Salem, Ohio. This track claims a history of 52 years, and all the big names raced there back in the day.
While most of these videos are of fairly low quality, they get across the feel of drag racng as it was in the golden years. The fact that this place will be back in operation after a massive investment from the Matcham family to completely rework the property is amazing. It will be good to have one of the better known strips in the country back up and running.
This one is from 1963, at a Fuel meet prior to the days of slipper cutches. Someone in 1963 held up hand-written notes in front of the camera after each run down the quarter mile.
Here’s one with footage from 1967 and 1968, including wheelstanders. It’s almost 5 minutes long.
This is 3 minutes of greatness from 1971.
Here’s another one we just discovered! It’s EJ Potter an Evel Knievel in 1974, plus Art Arfons’ turbine digger!
