LIONS …

THE GREATEST DRAGSTRIP?
By Don Gillespie

When considering the fact that more than 1,200 drag strips have been built in the U.S. since '49, perhaps no single track has ever captured the imagination, created more legendary figures, or held as many noteworthy events than a stretch of real estate sitting quietly off the San Diego freeway in Wilmington (CA), just south of L.A.

But don't bother to grab your jacket & camera & set sail for this holy grail of 1/4-mile landmarks, as Lions Drag Strip's 18-year reign ended w/"The Last Drag Race" event in the wee hours of 12/2/1972.

Given this 30+ year stretch of cruel time since the last pair of tire-burners scorched the mystical patch of asphalt known initially as LADS (Lions Associated Drag Strip), today's fans might be wondering, who the heck cares?

2-way runs were tried early on; here's Calvin Rice preparing to make his "return" run while starting from the finish line area toward the starting line.

I have been asking myself precisely that for the past 3 decades as I pondered some sort of Lions tribute. Initially, I thought this was due to its proximity to my childhood home where, as a wide-eyed kid growing up just a few miles away, I got my start w/a Brownie camera at age 14.

But history - & the words & deeds of those who experienced the "magic" 1st-hand, teach us that there is a real & viable basis for placing Lions at the literal top of the list.

After spending 30+ years as a drag racing photojournalist & more recently as a freelance TV motorsports producer for niche shows on ESPN2 & Speed Vision, I settled on doing an in-depth video documentary. These past 2 years, while gathering materials & research, have become an eye-opening journey into a past filled w/marvelous stories, gripping film & photographic depictions & heartfelt recollections which, for the sake of argument, explains Lions' major role in shaping the sport from near infancy to the format of 320 mph rear-engined missiles witnessed today.

Zane Shubert once tried a dual rear-engine "sidewinder", but a pair of backwards runs sent the crude machine to its demise at the end of a cutting torch.

When it initially came to making a decision to either do the project, or walk away, a phone call was placed to one of the sport's most revered figures, C.J. Hart, known to many as "Pappy", who opened the sport's 1st commercial dragstrip on an unused airport landing strip at Santa Ana (CA) in 1950. He later managed Lions in the mid to late '60s.

The gist of the conversation was that he was in his 90s, his health was in decline, & if I wanted to get any such stories out of the proverbial horse's mouth, "You better get your butt out here - & soon," he quipped.

Less than 2 weeks later I showed up w/video equipment at his door, hence the 1st interview - & literally Pandora's box of drag racing lore was opened.

Opening Day at Lions Dragstrip on 10/9/1955

Subsequent cross-country trips netted interviews w/such pioneers & notables as Fritz Voigt, Art Chrisman, Gene Adams, Don Garlits, Tom McEwen, Don Prudhomme, Tommy Ivo, Chris Karamesines, Connie Swingle, Roy "Goob" Tuller, Roland Leong, George Bolthoff, Ed Lenarth, Sush Matsubara, Bill Schultz, Paula Murphy, Don & John Ewald, Gerry Glenn, Joe Koenig & speed merchants Joe Reath, Ed Iskenderian, Chet Herbert, chief starter Larry Sutton, promoter Doug Kruse, photographers Steve Reyes & Jim Kelly & writers Ralph Guldahl, Dave Wallace & Don Prieto, plus C.J. Hart's son & Lions announcer, Jerry, likewise announcer & part-time starter, Tim Kraushaar, Drag News gossip columnist Suzy (Kelly) Beebe & artist, Tom Hunnicutt, to name a few. Others who graciously allowed our cameras into their homes were early track photographers Roy Robinson & Don Hale.

Before "Big Jim" Dunn became an NHRA funny car owner, he was burning up the tracks in top fuel; he campaigned a VW-bodied creation, plus a couple of successful Fiat-bodied altered before that.

And then there was Judy Thompson, who recounted her early years as a young girl infatuated w/a quick tempered & hot rod-afflicted young man who would become the proverbial "speed king" of the industry, her husband - & Lions' 1st GM, the late-Mickey Thompson. At her home we also spoke w/the track's original "hot" & "stock" car tech directors, Roy Swanson & Ray Halladay, respectively.

But let's backtrack one moment, because how the track came about is quite important. At the time period immediately following WW II, the day's youth had a lot of energy, a dollar in their pocket, an excess of sedans & roadsters to tinker with (thanks to a bevy of newsstand magazines later on such as Hot Rod), plus an infant industry capable of producing go-faster, DIY bolt-on parts, much of it from innovative & inquisitive thinkers w/backyard & garage industries born from knowledge gained in area aerospace & metal works.

Due to SoCal's year-round mild climate, youthful hot rod activity was a constant, & initially street & purpose-built racers converged on several dry lake beds such as nearby El Mirage & Muroc. The plentiful & unused concrete runways of airstrips newly abandoned by the military provided equally tempting locations for airing out one's hot iron. The need for such locations came at a price, as illegal street racing & highway incidents & deaths climbed in alarming proportions by the late-'40s, long before freeways were built.

Lions Dragstrip (1965)

The local police, including L.A. police officer Gordon Browning & specifically Long Beach's Bob Cabot (who along w/the Associated Car Club of Long Beach), made it their business to convince area car club members to direct their energies toward safer, supervised activities. A Long Beach judge also became alarmed at the newspaper headlines & court cases involving street racing & he got behind a movement to build a local dragstrip. The local Lions Club was informed, & altogether 9 Lions chapters from the L.A. harbor area got involved, a piece of land was secured, bonds were sold to create working capital, & in the summer of '55 work began on the construction of one of the sport's 1st purpose-built facilities. Thompson was hired as its sole paid employee.

Top fuel legend Don Garlits suffered a transmission explosion so severe that the cockpit was torn completely away, leaving the front section & engine by itself. This incident led to the 1st successful "front driver" car in the class - & the death of the "slingshot" 1 year later.

Amazingly, Thompson at the time had just built the sport's 1st "slingshot" dragster, while he simultaneously operated a muffler shop, worked at the L.A. Times as a pressman, & was about to take on a job of immense proportions as the dragstrip facility kingpin.

The track opened on 10/9/1955 - & so too did a great # of tales. Take for instance an 11 year-old kid who on that day was looking for lizards on some property near his home in west Long Beach when he heard a huge roar of sound. He walked toward the noise, parted some scrub brush & there he was near the finish line turnoff of an enormous new drag racing facility. Frank Fedak literally became a kid who pressed his face against the Cyclone fence for a closer look at the smoke-belching cars at the starting line. Within several years he became a regular competitor - & winner in the elite top fuel & junior fuel divisions. Before that his family moved to nearby Garden Grove, & at 14 he introduced his next-door neighbor to the sport, a kid named John Mulligan (later of top fuel Beebe & Mulligan fame).

Wild action from the altered wheelbase A/FX machines drew huge crowds & new legions of fans, as shown here by Dickie Harrell's Chevy Nova well past the starting line.

At the start the cars were mostly dry lakes racers, but 1/4-mile specific machines soon became the norm. And Lions' location in the literal center of civilization & later on conveniently at the south Alameda off-ramp of the newly-built 405 (San Diego) freeway, was the place to witness big league racing every Saturday evening for the hot cars, & again on Sundays during stock & bracket racing day.

Much innovation & bravado was displayed in the early going, w/initial sanction thru the National Hot Rod Association (NHRA), which was itself formed "as a social club" some 5 years prior. Thru Thompson's efforts it was the 1st track to utilize an electronic starting system instead of a flagman, for example. Later it would become one of the 1st to place electronic monitoring equipment at specific intervals along the track for increment times, incorporate concrete starting line pads, roller starters replaced unsafe push starts due to a frightening dragster accident in the mid-'60s & is a track where the advertising of major match races was born & flourished. It was also the 2nd dragstrip to draw crowds from Saturday night racing "under the lights" (Saugus was the 1st), & as luck would also have it, Lions was located just a couple of city blocks from where the sport's 1st "weekly bible" was published - Drag News.

After a year-&-a-half of successful operation, on 2/3/1957 a stunning series of runs by nitro-burning dragster pilot Emory Cook's San Diego-based machine netted a best of 166.97 mph, resulting in 7 area dragstrips who voted to place a total ban on fuel competition. The infamous "fuel ban" initially hit Lions & area racers hard, but resulted in some of the most innovative & exciting times in the sport's history. It also spawned the successful creation of an alternative event - the U.S. Fuel & Gas Championships at Bakersfield (a 3-hour drive north), & when NHRA adopted the gas-only limitations for all of their sanctioned tracks, including its handful of national events, the result was the elevation of a rival organization who indeed placed a premium on nitro-burning machines as major drawing cards, hence the emergence of the American Hot Rod Association (AHRA) w/the likes of Don Garlits, Setto Postoian & Chris Karamesines, among others.

Perhaps no one made more runs, drove more exotic & tempermental cars - or commanded more match race boos than Long Beach local, Tom McEwen, who was given the nickname "Mongoose" by Ed Donovan from a character in Kipling's "Jungle Book" as a response to his nemesis Don "Snake" Prudhomme.

Because a single-engine, gas-burning powerplant could only produce so much hp, inventive racers started to employ 2 engines; some placed inline like Lefty "Allen" Mudersbach, Glen Stokey, (John) Peters & (Nye) Frank (whose Quincy Auto rail was later known as the "Freight Train") & Chet Herbert's next-door neighbor, Zane Shubert. Others were side-by-side sensations including Tommy Ivo's, Howard Johansen's "Twin Bear", (Jim) Nelson & (Dode) Martin's "Two Thing", Thompson & Voigt's "Monster", (Don) Hampton & Dye's "Too Bad", plus consistent early winner "Jazzy Jim" Nelson's twin-Merc w/a Fiat body. The envelope was finally reached when former-child actor Ivo tried a 4-engine creation called "Showboat", which was relegated to exhibition runs when it spooked NHRA officials.

The mid-'50s also witnessed the last days of the flathead, as Chrysler, Olds & Chevrolet V8 engines became the norm, & these were soon being topped w/superchargers for greater power. With most of these racers building their own machines from the ground up (including Jerry Baltes' dragster frame built using his daughter's swing set), some like the locally-based "Bustle Bomb" came w/an engine in the front, & one in the rear. Art Arfons towed in from Ohio w/his Allison aircraft-powered behemoth; utilizing one of the sport's 1st parachutes. Another rear-engine oddity housing a blown Chrysler initially built by Paul Nicolini & later campaigned by Chuck Jones & Joe Mailliard, became known as the "Sidewinder" & from '59 was driven solidly by a gas station operator from the area, Jack Chrisman (Art's uncle), who later drove a series of other cars to great success, including single & dual-engined dragsters for Mickey Thompson, plus an all steel-bodied Mercury Comet w/a blown, nitro-burning engine in '64 that became one of the sport's 1st funny cars.

Motorcycles were also part of the Lions roar, as shown here by the homemade "Barn Job". In the early days the top motorcycle would be paired w/the fastest car for top eliminator, which the 2-wheelers claimed on many occasions.

All of this innovation, lack of adequate safety & the sheer #s of cars that congregated at Lions (because its proximity to the ocean meant incredible air & power-producing capabilities), came at a price. In fact, by the time Lions reached the mid-'60s, it had claimed more lives than in all previous years of the Indy 500. When it closed, more than 18 are known to have perished there, some famous & others anonymous.

Names that have long since faded from the headlines included such notables as Leonard Harris, nephew of Ansen wheel & speed shop founder, Lou Senter, who won more than a dozen straight top eliminators w/engine master Gene Adams & chassis builder Ronnie Scrima, plus Mickey Brown, the 1st man to top 150 on gasoline; both died there while testing cars for fellow racers. Joe "The Jet" Jackson lost his life while also trying out a car for another team. Jackson literally lived out of his push-car - ironically a hearse, after having moved from Maine to California during the winter months w/his red top fuel dragster in search of drag racing paydirt that never came. Dave Gendian was the 1st, & others like Pete Petrie, Harrell Amyx & Boyd Pennington joined a growing toll on the sport's pioneering dark side.

Other incidents were less tragic & have become the basis for time-tested lore. Current NHRA official starter Rick Stewart crashed at speed in the mid-'60s, & when he asked a nurse at the hospital why the world was on fire, she told him he had suffered a head injury. Stewart reportedly asked again why the world appeared on fire while looking thru the window, & she responded, "Oh, yeah, the Watts Riots just started."

Zane Shubert once made a pass there in a twin front-engine machine in which his feet resided under the rear-end, & when someone negated to properly fasten his restraining belts, he was thrown out of the cockpit after deployment of the parachute; he managed to hold onto the steering wheel w/his face was pressed next to the back engine's magnetos, while looking rearward toward the starting line thru his legs!

Many a racer ventured to Lions in search of fame & glory, as did Maine's Joe Jackson, who lived in his hearse push-car during midweek, & died in a friend's dragster shortly thereafter.

Long Beach resident Gary "Rocket Man" Gabelich once crashed in the fog, & wasn't found for the longest time. And when they finally reached his dragster upside-down & under a fence, his 1st question was "Did I win?" Glen Stokey also went thru the infamous Willow Street barrier w/a dragster, & the 1st person on the scene was an elderly man, who saw the blossoming parachute & rollcage bolt from the sky & asked safety personnel, "When did they start dropping these out of airplanes?"

Engle Cams GM Don Moody likewise had a terrible-looking accident at speed in Dave Zeuschel's fueler one night, & when the dust settled, after taking out scores of recently installed plywood fencing, he was found sitting on the track w/nothing but a shell of seat between his rear & the asphalt - w/literally no injuries. And in the funny car days of the early '70s, the Beaver Brothers had quite a scare the night their "L.A. Hooker" machine had the throttle stick just as 2 crewmen lowered the body - & went on one heck of a ride until half-track, where the 2 crewmen fell off, got up & walked away lucky. The tale was told by owner Gene Beaver's nephew - a kid who got his start in the sport w/his mom's car at Lions, John Force.

Perhaps my favorite was a contest between Bill Maverick's "Little Red Wagon" & Chuck Poole's "Chuck Wagon" wheelstanders. In their final round w/the scored tied, Maverick shocked the crowd when he set his front end down in the actual sand trap w/out too much damage & just a few yards from the property fence, & was feeling pretty good about his pending victory. But Poole would have none of it, & when he became disoriented from the fog past the finish line, he drove, wheels-up, past Maverick, thru an opening in the fence, down an access road, out the gate, & crashed upside-down into the adjoining property - the winner!

With pits jammed full of race cars on a given Saturday, the infamous Lions "watering hole" proved an interesting place to visit after dragster qualifying.

In those days there was sheer power in #s, & following the lifting of the fuel ban in '62 the #s of fuelers in the SoCal area grew to nearly 100. While you now have to wait all year for a sizable drag racing national event show in your "market", it was not unusual in the mid-'60s to witness more than 60 top fuel cars on a given weekend at Lions. Some events like the Mickey Thompson 200 MPH Club Meet had 64-car fields!

Toss in a match race w/the blown, gas-burning Willys of "Big John" Mazmanian vs. Stone, Woods & (Doug) Cook during what became the infamous "cam grinder wars", long lines of blown AA/Fuel & gas Altereds, AA/Gas Supercharged Anglias & Austins, wheel-stander & jet car oddities, (injected) junior fuel dragsters (started at Lions by Hart), top gas dragsters & later nitro funny cars - & even an injected funny car class & every sort of 2-wheeler imaginable, & you get some sense of what made this place so special in terms of depth. Oh, did I mention that in the early years they used to run the stock cars 4 at a time, because there were so many!

Another facet of the track was its unique layout, w/pit-side grandstands so close to the racing surface that dragster pilots who were push-started from the finish line toward the starting line said that the fans leaning over the fence could practically slaps hands as they drove past prior to a run. Also, the finish line "on deck" road was near another set of large grandstands, allowing spectators the opportunity to converse at the fence w/racers while awaiting the call to suit up. It was not unusual to see little kids chatting w/big name drivers in their fire suits just prior to their flame-throwing, on-track excursions.

Likewise, the physical layout was built to where the enormous pits funneled to conclusion under the timing tower behind the starting line like a sieve, & as a spectator you could stand there & literally rub elbows w/engine builders Black, Sid Waterman, Ed Pink & Dave Zeuschel, plus Isky, Leonard Van Luven, Bruce Crower, Dean Moon, Donovan & writers Guldahl, Prieto, Wallace & Terry Cook as they & the drivers & car owners exchanged barbs, ideas & laughter - then watched as metallic-suited men climbed into machines so volatile & dangerous that some never made it home alive.

Mickey Thompson literally did it all while managing Lions, as he also ran his El Monte muffler shop, was a pressman for the L.A. Times & was simultaneously building a speed parts enterprise - including construction of his 4-engine Bonneville streamliner "Challenger".

From a perspective of ambience, the huge petroleum refineries to the west, which were always burning off excess fuel w/large feathers of flame & smoke, plus a mass of tall electric powerline towers just to the east gave the place a feeling of enormous power & provided an eerie backdrop. Toss in the smell of hot dogs, tamales w/chili, your hand wrapped around the latest copy of Drag News, souvenir booths sometimes manned by a guy who would airbrush you a Rat Fink T-shirt - named Ed "Daddy" Roth, plus a wad of napkins needed to wipe the dew from your seat as the night air grew thick, & you get some idea of what a typical night was like at Lions - for 18 years!

In its mid-to-latter stages the dragster boys put up a valiant series of political stands w/big United Drag Racers Association (UDRA) meets; coupled w/area meetings & boycotts designed to force NHRA to pay more monetary rewards & resolve safety & licensing issues; some worked & other attempts failed. By the mid-'60s the diggers were then slighted as the southeastern FX/AFX & funny car craze took stage w/a literal stranglehold, then top fuelers made a comeback w/a couple of epic "dragster-only" PDA meets run impeccably by fabricator, Doug Kruse. Eventually both classes lived side-by-side until the end.

Just before the axe fell Lions was the setting for one of the most dramatic series of runs in the sport's history, when Don Garlits, the front-engine dragster "king", came to the line in the finals on 3/8/1970 during a meet under the track's then-AHRA sanction (& management of C.J. Hart). At the flash of green the transmission exploded in his "Wynn's Charger" & cut the car completely in half from his feet forward. Garlits was sent tumbling just past the starting line, minus a portion of his right foot above the arch, plus a spectator also lost an arm in the incident.

Garlits returned to the racetrack early the following year to officially debut a machine that placed the engine safely behind the driver, & w/a slower steering ratio which alleviated the problems faced by many of the sport's earlier back-motored machine. His final round showing & realized success (as he went on to win the NHRA Winternationals & Bakersfield March Meet in subsequent weeks) started a land-rush movement which obsoleted the front-engine "slingshot" w/in a year.

Early Lions gas dragster & top eliminator standout Fritz Voigt teamed up w/Thompson later on & together they campaigned this frightening, 4WD & twin-engine dragster "The Monster", which later became a Bonneville record holder.

Amazingly, after its 1st pass at Lions, while sitting on the return road, a new funny car driven by John Collins crashed, & the complete running engine made a beeline for Garlits & the new dragster. It bounced straight up in the air, glanced off the cowling on one side of the dragster, then kept on rolling. Both Garlits & crew chief Tommy T.C. Lemons commented that, had that engine hit the dragster any harder, because of their heavy race schedule (& w/another front-engine car ready to go), they may have never rebuilt that rear-engine car.

The remaining season-&-a-half witnessed Steve Evans as it's 3rd manager, who gave the track a fresh new look & a major NHRA season-opener (while returning to NHRA sanction) w/the Grand Premier, plus an adjacent motocross motorcycle track was built to increase income. But w/Wednesday night grudge racing, Friday motorcycles, Saturday & Sunday drag racing, it was becoming a further nuisance to nearby homeowners. Shortly thereafter when the next-door-neighbor "Lone Star Mothers" (who were widows or wives of military men living in large housing complexes) pressured local officials to revoke the track's lease w/the L.A. Harbor Commission, he became the reluctant architect of an epic, "The Last Drag Race", which fittingly pitted Tom McEwen against Don Prudhomme in the funny car final. The last 2 cars to officially grace the Lions surface occurred between eventual winner Carl Olson & Jeb Allen; both were kids who literally grew up there & later became top fuel stars.

Well, the above paragraph is partially correct, & points to more of the colorful commentary & laughter I hope everyone - young & old, will derive from the video, dubbed "Lions - The Greatest Dragstrip".

Off-the-record the final pass was made sometime later before sun-up by the track's official starter, Larry Sutton & his assistant, Bill Keys - & it was accomplished while they were being towed down-track by a rather intoxicated individual driving a station wagon while standing inside a wooden outhouse. Realizing their predicament at speed well into the run (especially considering the size of the crowd that day & the contents of the "hold"), the rope was nervously cut, the outhouse then smacked a guardrail, spun a few times - & Sutton & Keys emerged from their confines right at the finish line alive & "in-the-lights".

With upwards of 100 top fuel dragsters in the SoCal area, side-by-side tire-scorchers were a normal sight & featured some of the biggest names in the sport.

If you think that's an isolated case, there's a whole bunch more to be found on the video, scheduled for release to the general public by late-'04. To date more than 52 individuals were interviewed on-camera & a huge amount of never before seen 8mm home movie & 16mm film, plus close to a thousand still photos including the work of Reyes, Kelly & Don Varian (thanks to Dick Towers/Match Race Madness) Robinson, Hale, Jere Alhadeff, Norm Grudem, Doug Hayes, Alan Earman & Mickey McIver, plus the Don Garlits Museum of Drag Racing & NHRA Motorsports Museum, for example, have been acquired. There's even a 8mm film which surfaced w/in the past 2 years of the infamous Garlits front-engine accident that you must see to believe.

A separate trip to Colorado last summer likewise allowed access to a private individual's film collection, who had footage of the track being built from "day 1", plus the original film reels from KTTV (L.A.), of a 90-minute b&w "live" television broadcast from Lions in September '61. Included on this are interviews w/the likes of Jack Chrisman, Gary Cagle, Stokey, Prudhomme, McEwen, Dode Martin, Ronnie Hampshire, Bob Muravez, Mudersbach, plus the show was even emceed by track manager Mickey Thompson, himself.

Other snippet items of interest include an audio taped interview w/"Wild Willie" Borsch, conducted in '88 before the legendary AA/Fuel Altered pilot's untimely passing. Also, the current property owners allowed our cameras onto the facility, which provides an interesting before-&-after perspective, including panorama views from the rooftop of their multi-story office tower.

With Hollywood nearby the track became the scene of numerous movie & TV show shootings over the years, as exhibited here during an episode for The Musters called "Hot Rod Herman". That's Ansen Automotive's Lou Senter posing w/"Herman" character actor, Fred Gwynn.

As a final thought, consider the plight of Mickey Williams, a weekly bracket racer who lived for the excitement of Saturday nights & Sunday afternoons when he competed w/his Bracket 3 machine at Lions, until being drafted in late-'68. After only a couple of months in the jungles of Viet Nam, near the DMZ, w/only his purple Lions jacket tucked along for luck, a rocket-propelled grenade shattered his tank; Williams lucked out, but 3 companions were killed instantly. He was somehow rescued & patched back together w/more than 1,200 stitches.

All he wanted in life, at that point, was to retain a pulse - & witness the sights, sounds & smells of Lions one more time. After many operations & months of painful recovery, he was returned to his home near Long Beach & soon thereafter loaded into an awaiting car & driven to a piece of property officially listed at the corner of 223rd & Alameda. As he caught a glimpse of the starting line sign & those immense grandstands, a smile no doubt returned to his face, as he officially came "home".

Lions was like that to a lot of other people, from the hardest of the hardcore racers & even to the casual spectators. Times were different back then, & what this video will convey is the sense of history & significance, w/a tinge of reverence, & a large dose of visual smoke & thunder.

It was life at its best; a 1/4-mile at a time. Perhaps the grandest ever in the theater of drag racing. And Lions was the front row seat.

Now a container parking lot (1998)

Lions Drag Strip was a raceway in the Wilmington district of L.A. adjacent to Long Beach (CA) that existed from '55 to '72. The track was named after its sponsors Lions Clubs International & featured many races that were sanctioned by the NHRA.

As the area surrounding the track increased in population, complaints regarding noise were made to government officials. Subsequently, efforts were made to deny the operators of track continued use of the facility. After the last races took place on 12/2/1972, the track was quickly torn down thru the efforts of the L.A. Harbor Department to make space for overseas shipping cargo containers which exists to this day.

Nothing personal, it’s just business, you understand? Other proposed revenue schemes for the land that Lions Drag Strip sat on outweighed what could be made by the drag strip operations & lease. The dragstrip operation could no longer make the kind of money the port district officials wanted to see & they had a sure fire scheme to replace it. Lions Drag Strip was not quickly torn down after it closed in December of '72. The land & the track sat vacant for over 10 years until the Port District actually found a use for it or found a developer for it. The purported noise issue was a straw man, the one that politicians & NIMBYs usually hide behind when a limited use lease is up for renewal & land grab is at hand. Any environmental concerns cited at the time for the closing of Lions Drag Strip were a complete sham. The area the track was located at was & still is surrounded by chemical plants & refineries & now the major container/shipping facility that sits on the land. In '67 the nearest homes at the time were on the other side (North) of the freeway & other housing about 1 mile or more East of the track on the other side of a huge vacant open field on the left hand side (return road) of the track. Aerial photos of the day & present day still reveal this. Still by & large an industrial area.

There is an article in an issue of Car Craft Magazine about '82 or later vintage that shows pictures of the track at that time. This was prior to the '83 demise of Orange County International Raceway. The demise of Lions was due more to back room political dealing than anything else. Most SoCal drag strips have eventually faded into oblivion for all the same reasons. The land that most of the tracks sat on was leased & not owned by the strip operators, when the value of the land & property taxes exceeded the revenue the tracks could produce & still turn a profit they closed. To further compound their troubles, urban encroachment by housing started generating all the usual "whiner" noise complaints. If a track is on a limited use permit that is granted by quasi-government body it is always a battle at renewal time. More like a parole hearing! The Lions Clubs originally sponsored the strip to help curb illegal street racing. Now, once again, a problem in the SoCal area. The more things change, the more they stay the same.