Trends In Our Sport

[Bret Kepner]

Guys, your numbers are far from reality. Pennsylvania alone has had over sixty dragstrips.

Roland, Allan Brown was the first to make an effort to accurately chronicle all North American racetracks. He was a pioneer who archived a phenomenal amount of information prior to electronic gathering techniques. Allan retired almost a decade ago after printing three editions of his original book; the last was published in November, 2003.

I met Allan several times and he's a fantastic guy. Unfortunately, he was never a big drag racing fan, (although he enjoyed the sport), and his final listing, while impressive, included drastically fewer drag strips than were actually in operation over the years.

Almost twenty years ago, I formed a consortium to precisely locate, confirm, research, chronicle and archive all of 'em. The effort demands the hours of a full-time job each week and requires a massive effort from the members of a very small group. Our project isn't a hobby. It's a lifelong ordeal; it's a commitment to which we have each made huge sacrifices. It's no different than campaigning a Stocker every week of the year.

We take this project seriously, (excruciatingly so). We can never finacially recoup our investment and, therefore, have set a simple goal of making sure the information is available to people in the future. I'm not talking decades in the future. I'm referring to CENTURIES in the future.

There is no "web site". There is no "e-mail list". There is no FaceBook page. We owe no free information to anybody in this pursuit. Those who have assisted us receive our undying thanks and many, many people have assisted us.

I never meant my original response to Gary Smith to become a "Name Those Tracks" thread. He wondered about the data progression over the sport's first sixty-five years and I offered a response proving, as James Perrone noted, "the sky isn't falling".

Nothing more. Nothing less.