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August 18, 2021
Published Weekly, Read Daily
Bunker Hill Dragstrip
to celebrate 65th year It was Aug. 25, 1956, that Bunker Hill Dragstrip opened as the first drag strip in Indiana and today continues to offer racing enthusiasts a refuge for their need for speed. The track will be celebrating its milestone with a special 65th Anniversary event on Saturday, August 28 with “The First Lady of Drag Racing”, 3-time NHRA World Champion Shirley Muldowney serving as the Grand Marshal. The sport of drag racing is relatively young considering the first Indianapolis 500 was held in 1911. Drag racing started in post-WW II years with racing on dry lakes in Southern California. Wally Parks was then editor of Hot Rod magazine and recognized the need to organize the activity and formed the National Hot Rod Association in 1951. Racing on the dry lakes evolved from acceleration runs on half-mile or mile courses for speed to quarter mile runs from a standing start. The hot-rodding movement made its way across the country through readers of Hot Rod magazine and NHRA’s formation of a traveling “Safety Safari” organizing drag racing events on decommissioned air strips. Locally, young enthusiasts would gather at Converse Field, an auxiliary landing strip for the Bunker Hill Naval Air Station including Jim Hullinger with his Studebaker he raced at Warsaw, Kokomo, and Montpelier dirt tracks. Local authorities’ shutdown the activity at Converse. Hullinger seeing the need for a track purchased some land south of Bunker Hill and along with three businessmen from Kokomo organized the Central Indiana Timing See Dragstrip, Page 2
Vol. 2, No. 25
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