Hot Rods Lewistown, Montana... Drag Racing in 1959.

Good eye! That's correct, that was Gene Burkland's dragster in the 50's Lewistown video. He ran a Cad/LaSalle gearbox behind a 392 hemi ---and if my memory serves me right, it was one of the first dragsters in Montana. Volumes could be written about Gene, his skills, his passion for cars, his contagious, friendly, personality and his love for the salt. He will be missed!!!!

 

I'm glad to see others out there haven't forgotten about the drag strip in glendive. Hustlers drag strip was the track name. I am working on getting another one here. I remember when I was a kid hoing out to the track with my brothers. Now I race in Malta, just getting started.. only one complete year under my belt. Any info on what works best for a track would be greatly appreciated. I want the best track in the state.

 

Man, the history just POURS out of this post! Amazing!

 

During high school my principal was a major gearhead, my buddy and I were dragging main one night and we hear a healthy engine rumbling away. The principal lived one block off main so we followed the noise to his house and found him and my biology teacher tuning the principals FED, it was awesome. He apparently ended up side down in the car at the Glendive track and caught fire but he walked away. My auto teacher was a good guy and he would send me to the principals office when I had hot rod questions and he would give me advise. My principal, biology, wood and welding teachers were all hot rodders and while my auto teacher wasnt really one he would let us pursue our hot rod desires. Love to hear this MT hot rod history.

 

Nice old pics. Tom (tired Old man)

 

Thought I might try to rejuvenate and/or spark a little interest back into this thread---- so I dug into some old shoe-boxes and found a couple of newspaper articles which tell what took place in Lewistown back in 1959 during a couple of weekends of car shows and drag races!!!!
I'll try and post one of em here so you can see for yourself.
Keep in mind, these were not just articles out of our local Montana papers---these made the National News and were seen all over the country!
You can only imagine what that did for organized drag racing in Mt and for all the legitimate clubs who were attempting to establish there own drag strips!
There's a lot more to what REALLY happened, but I'll leave it here for now to see what sort of interest, opinions, and/or comments this brings.

PS. It was a hell-of-a-weekend!!!

 

Speaking of small world! HIGHWOOD???

I went to Centerville! Graduated in 1991!

I had no idea about Lewistown's lineage until now. I learned everything I know about drag racing there and had raced my O/T car there in the mid-1990s. (On a side note: me and that same maroon 67 Mustang was one of those bastards responsible for gettingthe speed limit put back into effect! But that's another story, I've grown up and am now raising kids!)

I knew it was fairly old, my old man used to race diggers there (at least that's what mom told me). Anyone who ran with the rail crowd up there in the (guess here) mid-60s to very early-70s, get with me. Trying to learn more about my old man, who is no longer alive. Somebody might know him, might not, its worth a try.

Ryan, thanks for finding and posting this.

 

Centerville, now thats something, graduated 1965.

 

Here are a few pics from Lewistown. (Year Unknown) I will try to find some more. I don't know who owns the cars, If you recognize them let me know.

 

I go to the lewistown drag strip every summer! It's always a lot of fun! One of the old car clubs from back in the day had a hot rod reunion Last winter and a bunch of cars that use to run in lewistown back in the day were their on display!

 

Never raced at any of the mentioned strips, but spent almost all of my spare time at which ever one was having races, and was the easiest to get to. Grew up around Belgrade so that was first choice. Lewistown was the next, so I made a lot of trips there. Got to see Ivo's Showboat run in Belgrade. Was the best of times! Wouldn't mind a "Do over"!

 

Yeah, I saw Ivo at Belgrade myself, spent a lot of weekends at Belgrade and also Conrad.

 

I remember when this happened, but I have always suspected this account in this article was stretched a bit.

 

Do you mind if I post your photos on Lewistown Raceway website?

 

Yeah, two Class "C" schools represented on same thread! I had a class of 15!

VERY Small world!

 

Centerville 1965 32 graduates.
Centerville 1964 9 graduates.

 

too cool

 

Dick Erlandson also raced an original 1969 Hurst Super Stock AMX and a 62 Super Duty Pontiac. I had a few conversations with him about the AMX-he flat towed it home from California to Montana after he bought it. Here is a link to the page on his AMX with some pictures he sent me. (For some reason his website is down):

http://superstockamx.com/page50.php

 

You meet the nicest people when you drive a hot rod. I was recently in my '54 Buick and sporting my snazzy MoonShiners C.C. shirt, and a older gentleman struck up a conversation with me at the bar. Turns out, Jerry, was the VP of the Road Sturs of Lewistown Mt. and helped start the drag racing track there. He has great history and agreed to sit down with me and tell me a few stories for the record. I stopped by his house and he showed me his original club jacket from '57 and he even has one of the rare Absaroka original license plates (which if you follow the link in my signature you will know why I am so fond of them). Behind him in the picture is his chopped '50 Merc with an early 327 sb. What a freaking cool guy.


I will make sure to show him these videos so he can add some more information to this. He's a sharp guy and if I wasn't on my way out of town the day I met him, we could have bullshitted all damn day.

 

Here's more videos

 

I had an extremely well misspent youth in Lewistown during those days.