(Photos: Jeffrey Sefranek collection) – Back in February of 2013, I ran a fairly short piece here on BangShift about the ghostly remnants of Milton Speedway, the premier drag strip in Vermont during the 1960s. The track was NASCAR sanctioned, ran a strong weekly program, regularly had match races and other shows and was an early home to such racers as Shirley Muldowney and other more regionally known competitors. The track was opened for business in the middle 1960s and then was closed sometime in the early 1980s (as best we can tell). The interesting thing about the story (WHICH YOU CAN READ HERE) is that I receive more email on it than virtually anything else I have published here on BangShift. So many people remember being at the track or racing there that they type in “Milton Speedway” into Google and our story comes up.
Normally these people wonder if we have any photos or more information and the answer is sadly no. Everything I had was published in the story…and then Jeff Sefranek emailed me the awesome old photos below and gave me permission to share then with all of you, which is fantastic because they contain some truly neat and (we’re pretty sure) never before published images. The ones of a young Bobby Lagana racing his wheelstanding, altered wheelbase A/FX Mercury are particularly fantastic but they’re all great and they are among the only images we have ever seen of cars actually racing down the track at Milton. I really love when we’re able to show you stuff like this here at BangShift because the history of these tracks is important to both recognize and expose as much as possible so we all understand and appreciate our hot rodding roots. Who knows, maybe these photos will spur on some more people to sift through their dusty albums for images of their own hot rodding past. We can only hope –
ON TO THE PHOTOS!
Looks like a Pontiac engine in that old rail.
Good stuff Brian On that other story the comments say it opened by 1964 and lasted to 70 or 71,