Drag racing is a type of motor racing in which automobiles or motorcycles compete, usually two at a time, to be first to cross a set finish line. The race follows a short, straight course from a standing start over a measured distance, most commonly 1⁄4 mi, with a shorter distance becoming increasingly popular, as it has become the standard for Top Fuel dragsters and funny cars, where some major bracket races and other sanctioning bodies have adopted it as the standard. The 1⁄8 mi is also popular in some circles. Electronic timing and speed sensing systems have been used to record race results since the 1960s.
Greene County is a county located in the U.S. state of Arkansas. As of the 2010 census, the population was 42,090. The county seat is Paragould, which sits atop Crowley's Ridge.
Sonoma Raceway is a road course and dragstrip located at Sears Point in the southern Sonoma Mountains of Sonoma, California, United States. The road course features 12 turns on a hilly course with 160 feet (49 m) of total elevation change. It is host to one of the seven NASCAR Cup Series races each year that are run on road courses. It has also played host to the IndyCar Series, the NHRA Mello Yello Drag Racing Series, and several other auto races and motorcycle races such as the American Federation of Motorcyclists series. Sonoma Raceway continues to host amateur, or club racing events with some open to the public. The largest such car club is the Sports Car Club of America. The track is 30 miles north of San Francisco and Oakland.
Charlotte Motor Speedway is a motorsport complex located in Concord, North Carolina, 13 mi (21 km) outside Charlotte. The complex features a 1.5 mi (2.4 km) quad oval track that hosts NASCAR racing including the prestigious Coca-Cola 600 on Memorial Day weekend, and the Bank of America Roval 400. The speedway was built in 1959 by Bruton Smith and is considered the home track for NASCAR with many race teams located in the Charlotte area. The track is owned and operated by Speedway Motorsports with Marcus G. Smith as track president.
Brainerd International Raceway is a road course, and dragstrip racing complex northwest of the city of Brainerd, Minnesota. The complex has a 0.25-mile (0.402 km) dragstrip, and overlapping 2.5-mile (4.023 km) and 3.1-mile (4.989 km) road courses. The complex also includes a kart track. The raceway hosts the National Hot Rod Association's Lucas Oil Nationals. It is a popular racetrack for the Trans Am Series. The spectator seating capacity of the circuit is 20,000.
Great Lakes Dragway is a quarter mile dragstrip in the Town of Paris, Kenosha County, near Union Grove, Wisconsin.
The Miami-Hollywood Motorsports Park was an auto racing complex in Pembroke Pines, Florida. Opened in March 1966, it was located east of the Hollywood Sportatorium near the corner of 172nd Avenue and what was then Hollywood Boulevard.
Gainesville Raceway is a quarter-mile dragstrip just outside Gainesville, Florida. It opened in 1969 and is most famous for hosting the NHRA's prestigious Gatornationals event since 1970. Kenny Bernstein became the first drag racer to break the 300 mile-per-hour barrier at the track on March 20, 1992, during qualifying for that year's Gatornationals.
Auto Club Raceway at Pomona, also known as Pomona Raceway, is a racing facility located in Pomona, California that features a quarter-mile dragstrip. Since its opening in 1961, the dragstrip has hosted the NHRA's Winternationals event – the traditional season opener – and since 1984, the season's last race, the NHRA Finals. These two events have contributed to its becoming perhaps one of the most famous dragstrips in North America. The facility has a seating capacity of 40,000 spectators, and it is one of the few dragstrips in the USA that is operated directly by the NHRA. This dragstrip has also gone by the nickname of The Fairplex, in reference to its location at the Fairplex, formerly called the Los Angeles County Fairgrounds.
The National Bank of Commerce Building is a historic commercial building at 200 S. Pruett St. in downtown Paragould, Arkansas. It is a two-story structure, built out of cut stone, with a center entrance recessed in a two-story opening with flanking Ionic columns. This Classical Revival style building, probably the finest of its style in Greene County, and the least-altered bank building of the period in Paragould, was designed by the Memphis firm of Hankers and Cairns and was built in 1923.
The Cache River Bridge is a Parker pony truss that spans the Cache River between Walnut Ridge and Paragould, Arkansas. It was built in 1934 by the Arkansas State Highway Commission and was designed by the Vincennes Bridge Company. Formerly carrying U.S. Route 412 and earlier Arkansas Highway 25, the structure was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1990, and was bypassed by a new bridge in 1995.
St. Mary Church is a Catholic parish in Helena-West Helena, Arkansas, in the North Delta deanery of the Diocese of Little Rock. The historic parish church is located at 123 Columbia Street.
The Old Bethel Methodist Church, also known as the Old Bethel School, Church, & Cemetery, is a historic Methodist church, school and cemetery in rural Greene County, Arkansas. It is located on Highway 358,& Greene 712 Road in Paragould, Arkansas. It is a modest single-story wood-frame structure, built in 1901, and standing next to a cemetery established in 1882. The original Bethel Methodist Church was constructed in 1880, a small, onestory, white frame church. In 1900, a storm destroyed this building and in 1901 an almost identical building replaced the original structure. George Russell, a local carpenter, built the building using native materials of cypress and pine. It measures 20 feet by 40 feet and has a high pitched roof covered by tin. Exterior walls are covered with six inch beveled pine siding, while interior walls and ceiling are beaded pine wall board. Adjacent to it is a cemetery that dates to 1886. The first person buried here was Moss Widner in 1882. The building served the small community of Finch as not just a church, but also as a school, and was vacated in 1941. It was restored in the 1970s by a group of local concerned citizens, and is occasionally used for services.
The Riverside International Speedway is an automobile racing facility at 151 Legion Road in West Memphis, Arkansas. Its facilities consist of a 0.25-mile (0.40 km) Gumbo clay oval with banked corners, bleacher seating on both straightaways. Amenities include a concession stand. The track was built in 1950 and opened June 10 of that year at an estimated cost of $150,000 by C L Montgomery, originally to showcase midget car racing. It has held a World of Outlaws race. The track is nicknamed "The Ditch".
The Jackson–Herget House is a historic house at 206 South 4th Street in Paragould, Arkansas. It is a 2+1⁄2-story wood-frame structure, clad in aluminum siding. It has asymmetrical massing typical of the Queen Anne period, with a variety of gables, projecting sections, porches, and a three-story tower topped with a steeply pitched hip roof and wrought iron railing. It is one of the finest Queen Anne houses in Greene County, despite the aluminum siding, which was added in such a way to match the earlier clapboarding and without destroying some of the trim. The house is further notable as the home of Richard Jackson, one of Paragould's leading businessmen and civic boosters.
The Linwood Mausoleum is a massive limestone structure in Linwood Cemetery, Paragould, Arkansas. Occupying the highest ground in the cemetery, it is a rectangular single-story Classical Revival limestone structure, with stained-glass windows. Its interior walls are finished with gray-veined white marble. The entry is sheltered by a portico with Doric columns. The mausoleum houses 170 crypts. Built in 1920 by a group of private citizens, it was later conveyed to the city, and is Arkansas' only known city-owned mausoleum. It is also architecturally distinctive in the region for its heavy limestone construction and Classical Revival features.
The Paragould Downtown Commercial Historic District encompasses the historic central business district of Paragould, Arkansas. The city was organized in 1882 around the intersection of two railroad lines, which lies in the southwestern portion of this district. The main axes of the district are Court and Pruett Streets, extending along Court from 3½ Street to 3rd Avenue, and along Court from King's Highway to Highland Street, with properties also on adjacent streets. Prominent in the district are the 1888 Greene County Courthouse, built during the city's first major growth spurt. Most of the district's buildings are one and two stories in height, and of masonry construction. The National Bank of Commerce Building at 200 S. Pruett is a notable example of limestone construction, and of Classical Revival styling found in some of the buildings put up during the city's second major growth period in the 1920s.
The Paragould War Memorial is a scaled-down replica of the Statue of Liberty, located in Courthouse Park near the Greene County Courthouse at the heart of Paragould, Arkansas. The statue is a bronze cast created by John Paulding, and was cast at the American Art Bronze Foundry in Chicago, Illinois in 1920. The statue is 95 inches (2.4 m) high, and is mounted on a rectangular marble base 80 inches (2.0 m) high. It was erected to honor the city's soldiers who participated in World War I, and is the only sculptural memorial into Arkansas from that war that is not a doughboy statue.
The St. Mary's Catholic Church is a historic church building at 301 W. Highland in Paragould, Arkansas. It was designed early in the career of Charles Eames, and is one of only two known church designs of his in Arkansas, the other being St. Mary's, Helena. Built in 1935, it is stylistically a modern reinterpretation of Romanesque Revival architecture. The congregation was organized in 1883; this is its second sanctuary.
Firebird Raceway is a motorsport racing venue in the western United States, near Eagle, Idaho, in the Boise metropolitan area. The raceway opened 53 years ago in 1968 under management of racing enthusiasts Bill and Ellanor New, and it has remained under ownership of the New family.
