Many of the dragways of yesteryear have been fully consumed by residential and commercial “progress,” all traces of their former glory wiped clean off the map to make way for new developments. But littered throughout the nation, often nestled deep in wooded overgrowth and with heavily weathered identifiable markings only obvious to the most astute of historians and locals, are the remains of what are often referred to as “ghost tracks.”

Rarely are these former sites of acceleration contests drivable, their racing surfaces often no longer fully intact or completely shrouded by mother Earth. But in the small town of Coeburn, Virginia — population 1,567 — sits the site of the former Coeburn Airport Dragstrip (also referred to in various places as Coeburn Dragstrip and Lonesome Pine Dragstrip), and unlike other long-forgotten tracks, this one has held up to the test of time quite well, relatively speaking.

The Coeburn strip is located just to the Northeast of the 3/8-mile Lonesome Pine Raceway in Westernmost Virginia, and the only information we can drum up on the facility is that it was run as a racetrack by a gentleman named J.B. Tiller (who also owned a dragstrp in Tennessee) from 1964 until 1971. It remained an operational air strip until 1994, at which time it supposedly closed for good. In 1972 the neighboring Lonesome Pine Raceway opened, so perhaps circle-track racing was more desirable in the area. Nevertheless, the lack of trees growing through the pavement — although there are certainly some lining it — suggests someone kept up with the property to some degree. And it’s that fact that allowed the former dragway to contest side-by-side racing again almost half a century after it last had a racecar on it.

A group of area no-prep racers recently took it upon themselves, with the blessing of the property owner, to clear the standing water and mud from the former runway and adjacent taxiway that parallels it — the two lanes once making up the Coeburn Dragstrip — and do a little much-needed weed-killing to get it back in fighting shape. Now, no doubt a stretch of pavement that hasn’t seen rubber in 49 years and essentially pre-dated the use of traction compound is as no-prep as it gets, so these guys and gals really got down on the truest example of a no-prep surface as you’ll find this side of a public road. Adding to that, racers had to drive through the grass both at the beginning and end of a run, so this was as rudimentary a drag race as you can imagine. But they did it…they brought a “ghost track” back to life, and that’s really the dream of each and every racing historian who painstakingly hunts down and documents these former palaces of speed and imagines just one more run down those two lanes of blacktop , so kudos to them for making what’s old sort-of new again.