Drag Illustrated Issue 151, December 2019 | Page 44

D.I. COLUMNIST
On the Road
with Van Abernethy
W
hen it comes to his-
torically significant drag
strips, SRCA Drag Strip
in Great Bend, Kansas, ranks pretty
high on the list. Etched in history as
the site of the very first NHRA Na-
tional in 1955, the track was eventu-
ally registered as a Historical Site by
the Kansas State Historical Society,
in which a ceremony was held and
attended by the governor, who came
to recognize the significant role their
local drag strip played in the shap-
ing of drag racing on a national level.
“SRCA” stands for Sunflower
Rod and Custom Association, a car
club that was formed on January 19,
1954, and operates the drag strip
to this present day. The drag strip
joined NHRA in April 1955, and
soon afterwards, the Great Bend
Chamber of Commerce wrote a let-
ter to NHRA President Wally Parks,
requesting that Great Bend, Kansas,
be the site of the first-ever national
meet. The NHRA responded
favorably, and the event was
slated for Sept. 29-Oct. 2, 1955.
The ground-breaking event
was attended by 15,000 spec-
tators, who marveled at the 219
cars competing that day. Par-
ticipants didn’t race for a cash
purse, but rather, trophies and
sponsor prizes.
Among the highlights of my
trip to Great Bend was meeting
Ed Ward, age 81, who not only
attended, but competed in that
historic event nearly 65 years
ago. “I borrowed my dad’s car
without permission, and came
out here and raced it!” recalls
Ward, with a hearty laugh of
satisfaction. His dad’s wheels
happened to be a 1954 Ford,
equipped with a 6-cylinder en-
gine and automatic transmis-
sion, which blistered the quar-
ter mile to the tune of 20-something
seconds, as Ward recalls.
Amazingly, Ward still has the
metal dash plaque NHRA gave
each participant that day. He even
brought the plaque and showed
it to me, along with an incredible
collection of memorabilia and pho-
tos from that historic race in 1955.
These days, Ward heads up a fairly
large racing team that is compiled
of his five grandkids, who carry on
the drag racing tra-
dition of their proud
grandfather.
The NHRA only
held one national
event in Great Bend,
electing to move the
race to Kansas City,
Missouri, in 1956.
Ironically, NHRA
deemed asphalt much
safer to race on, and
since the strip in Great Bend was
a former World War II landing
strip made of concrete, the race
was relocated. This hardly put a
dent in Great Bend’s ability to hold
big events. In fact, just as NHRA
was moving out, the newly formed
AHRA moved in and held their own
nationals at SRCA Drag Strip from
1956-1959.
The significance of this track is
monumental, as “Big Daddy” Don
Garlits won his first AHRA nation- recalls. “I would have
loved to have attend-
ed the first NHRA
National there in 1955,
because the Drag Sa-
fari went from Lake
City, Florida, to Great
Bend for the nation-
als, and I actually won
the race in Lake City,
which was my first big
NHRA win. I worked
in a body shop and my boss was real
nice and let me off half a day on Sat-
urday so I could race at Lake City.
“They all wanted me to go on to
Kansas for the nationals, but trav-
eling to Great Bend was out of the
question for me in 1955,” Garlits
continues. “I had a hard enough
time getting off half a day just to
race up the road in Lake City! Be-
sides that, I was still flat-towing...I
didn’t even have a trailer yet.”
Drag racing was truly in its in-
al event at Great Bend in 1958. “I
wanted to go there the year before,
but I was at Cordova and blew the
engine up and didn’t have another,
so I had to go home,” Garlits told me
during a telephone interview.
As for his 1958 outing, Garlits
clocked a 9.31 at 168 mph and won
the event, but it wasn’t without ad-
versity. “I had to do some engine
work outside in the parking lot of a
local motel in Great Bend,” Garlits fancy and Garlits spoke with a cer-
tain reverence of those early days. It
gave me chills to walk around the
facility and imagine what it must
have been like nearly 65 years ago.
Although the present-day track is
extremely tidy, much of the original
construction is still in place. “See
those staging lanes? That’s the origi-
nal concrete from the 1940s,” says
Hank Denning, the track’s manager
and president of the SRCA car club.
The pit area is also the same
concrete that was poured during
World War II. The center section
of the track where the tree is po-
sitioned and the starter stands is
on asphalt from 1958, when AHRA
had it done! Although this track is
a treasured relic of yesteryear, and
indeed, the racing surface is overdue
for a reconstruction, that still didn’t
stop Megan Meyer from clocking
278 mph here in her Top Alcohol
Dragster last year during a Lucas
Oil meet.
The trip to Great Bend is among
the most memorable excursions I’ve
been on lately, and I was especially
thrilled when the track let me bor-
row this photo taken at the famous
race in 1955 for this month’s column
photo. In 1994, longtime track of-
ficial Arlan Werth built the majority
of a replica tower, identical to the
one in the photo. It was placed at
the entrance of the track to greet
racers, and so those traveling
down the highway (appropri-
ately named B29 Way) could
see it and be reminded of the
incredible role this track played
in drag racing. “There’s stuff
that has gone down here that
you’ll never see again,” smiles
Werth.
Hank, Arlan and the entire
staff of SRCA couldn’t have
been more accommodating
during my visit. They sent
me home with an armload of
memorabilia, including an
awesome replica of the 1955
race program. “We’ve got an
original copy, but it’s safely put
away,” Denning says.
The local Barton County
Historical Society Museum
even has an exhibit for the drag
strip, which features an origi-
nal SRCA uniform, a jacket and
a flag used to start the race in 1955.
Inside the present-day timing tower
hangs a vast array of black and white
photos from that historic race. Vin-
tage trophies decorate the window
sills of the tower. Even a proclama-
tion from the governor hangs on the
wall, declaring the Historical Site
status of SRCA Drag Strip.
I left Great Bend, Kansas real-
izing I had just experienced some-
thing extraordinary that day.
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