One of the coolest ghost tracks in the USA is Pennsylvania’s Pocono Drag Lodge. The whole racing surface is very much intact, the old tower has been reskinned to look like a functional building and when you are on the property you can almost hear the cars ripping down the track and using the uphill shutdown area at the end of a run. Pocono was never a fancy place but it was a popular one. Opened in the first half of the 1960s and closed in the early 1970s the track’s eight year history may have been short but it birthed the career of Joe Amato among others and that’s gotta be worth something, right?
This video appears to have been made by a local news channel and it is a great look back at the facility through vintage film footage and Amato’s own personal memories. You will see people watching on the dirt hill, trucks towing cars in on the very marry path like roads, and the general nature of pure, no-frills drag racing at its finest.
I have been to Pocono Drag Lodge and it is beyond neat. I was there in the dead of winter, snow blowing, and it was still awesome. My kids enjoyed it as well. You literally walk into the woods and come upon a huge clearing and then there it is. The surface, the shutdown area, and the old buildings.
I was there one year for there reunion. It was cool watching the cars line up at the christmas tree for the photo shoots. Too bad it lived a short life and so close to Pocono Raceway.