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I paid a visit to the DelMar Fairgrounds in the winter of 1997. What an incredible place. The huge grandstand is absolutely gorgeous, almost like a palace and the surrounding grounds are stunning. The temporary concrete walls were still in place around the track. I walked into the grandstand, sat down and just spent a few minutes taking in the sites. No one was there except the maintenance men but I tried to invision the SC cars racing around on the beautiful mile track. A fantastic facility just off the Pacific Ocean just north of San Diego. I think the late Bing Crosby had something to do with the grounds when it was originally built. Too bad SC racing hasn't continued there.
I visited another historic race track site, the Arizona State Farigrounds in the winter of 1991. I had seen pics of the track and grandstand in some race mags and wanted to see what actually was still there. There it was!! The grandstand! Still there but it didn't look nearly as big as the pics showed it. Maybe it would hold 5,000 people. The mile track is gone but there is still part of it in front of the grandstand where they hold rodeos , demo derbies and motocross. It looked to me like the original guardrail was still in place in front of the grandstand where Elmer George crashed into a bunch of spectators. The former infield is now a parking lot and sitting where the backstctch used to be is an outdated coliseum. Unlike the DelMar grounds, this place needs some updating badly.
The third historic site that I visited was the Michigan State Farigrounds sitting in the middle of a Detroit ghetto. wow... you need an armed bodyguard in that neighborhood. The lady at the entrance wouldn't let me in so I drove around to the back off of 8 Mile Road and found an open gate. I drove in and there was a hint of the mile track. The old condemned grandstand was still there (since demolished), not very big, maybe would hold 3,000 people. A big portion of the infield has been taken over by a commercial Baseball field business... but... apparently when the track was shut down they left the original banking in place because you could see exactly where the track used to be. In fact, if you removed the grass and weeds you could probably race there again. At one point a few years ago, there was a movement to build a paved mile track there but a high dollar neighborhood a mile or so away said the noise would be too much and the mayor and city officals put the clamps on the project.
Don Moore
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