.

the car junkie daily magazine.

.

George Ray’s Wildcat Dragstrip Revisited


George Ray’s Wildcat Dragstrip Revisited

Among the last things I posted at the old CarJunkieTV site was a blog and photo gallery about George Ray’s Wildcat Dragstrip in Paragould, Arkansas. I didn’t want those memories to go lost, so I’m re-blogging them here just so the documented record stays alive. It’s worth a revisit, and if you’ve never heard of George Ray’s and missed the photo album the first time around, make sure to check it out here.

Here’s the text from my blog back in October 2008:

George Ray

I have a lot of automotive heroes. George Ray is the newest one, and for the moment anyway, he’s at the top of the heap. I’d heard his story a number of times in my journeys through the gearhead existence, but having last week stood in the man’s yard and shaken his hand, the deal is sealed. This guy rules.

See, George Ray is the founder and proprietor of George Ray’s Wildcat Hot Rod Dragstrip in Paragould, Arkansas, and he has been since 1961 when he opened the gates after having built his very own track in his own back yard. He’s opened those gates every Sunday during the racing season ever since, and his wife told us that George himself has missed maybe five or six days of racing in the last 47 years. George is 81 years old this year and remains the gun-toting law around his own drag strip.

His way. The American way. We asked George what made him open up his own track so long ago, and he said, “Because I wanted to.” He’d purchased the property–an old bean field that was 800 feet wide and 3/4 of a mile long–in the late ’50s for $3,500, and soon was able to buy an extra 200 feet of land next door, and eventually even more property such that he essentially has no neighbors. He described that concrete was something like $13 a yard back in ’61, and he had the gumption to pour it himself. He also banged together his own tower, fences, and seating areas. The track opened as a quarter-miler, but as cars got faster over the years and the runoff became too short, it was castrated to an eighth-mile.

The Wildcat Dragstrip has always been an outlaw deal, with no sanctioning body and no rules other than a loose, run-what-ya-brung, heads-up class structure. We asked George if he’d ever brought in any big shows, or paid for name-brand talent. “Nope,” came the answer, “didn’t want to deal with it.” He didn’t have to. It was his way or the highway.

It still is. You can pay $8 to race or to watch, and the gates open right after the on-track church service every Sunday during the season. What you’ll get for your 8 bones is way more than track time; you’ll be transported to another world where rules, insurance, and any protocol other than George Ray’s just don’t exist. You’ll run on a narrow, all-concrete pad that’s warped and cracked, the only evidence whatsoever of the passage of time since 1961.

It’s awesome to me that, at one time, a guy could get away with running a race track in his back yard without any hassles, and it’s more impressive that it still goes on to this day. This is the type of story you can only find in America, yet it’s one that’s unlikely to be retold or relived in this litigous day of regulations and fear.

But for now, one man stands in the face of all of that. His name is George Ray.


  • Share This
  • Pinterest
  • 0