Atco Dragway’s six-decade story has come to an abrupt end, but it used to host drivers striving for 200 mph and at least one biker wedding

South Jersey’s Atco Dragway announced its abrupt closure on Tuesday, putting an end to more than six decades of its storied history in drag racing.

The announcement came via a Facebook page run by Atco Dragway, but provided no explanation for its closure. Instead, the post simply announced Atco Dragway was closed permanently, and all its remaining events in 2023 were canceled.

“Thank you all for your patronage and memories over the years,” the announcement read.

With that, the story of the first official drag strip in New Jersey, opened in 1960, came to an unceremonious end.

But according to previous Inquirer reports, that ending has been coming since 2020, when it was revealed that an Illinois company had submitted an application to the New Jersey Pinelands Commission to redevelop the 180-acre site on which Atco Dragway sits to be used as an automobile auction facility.

Atco Dragway’s owner, Leonard Capone Jr., could not be reached for comment Wednesday.

So, while the famed drag strip’s story appears to be winding down, it’s had quite the run over the last 63 years. Here’s how The Inquirer and Daily News covered it:

Officially opened on Memorial Day Weekend 1960, Atco Dragway was launched by Camden area businessmen Paul Jaffe, Paul B. Katz, Edwin Rosner, and Lester M. Medvene, according to an Inquirer report. In 1968, Katz died by suicide in his car behind the strip.

In building the strip, which formerly was known as Atco Raceway, the group brought a then-rising sport to the Philadelphia region, and helped take drag racing off the highways and onto a quarter-mile strip. Paramount for them, one founder said, was safety.

Before opening, the group made a detailed study of drag strips around the country, and combined features from each at Atco Dragway. They chose the location because it was relatively far from residential areas, and ultimately received praise from the National Hot Rod Association, the American Automobile Association, and the state of New Jersey.

“Our emphasis is on safety first and spectator comfort,” Jaffe told The Inquirer in 1961.

After its opening, professional racers flocked to Atco to try to become the first person to top 200 mph at the track. At the time, the Daily News reported in 1961, the world record for a gas-powered car was 189.46 mph.

The first guy to come close was the famed Don Garlits, whose Swamp Rat — a Chrysler dragster with a blown 454-cubic-inch motor — appeared to be a good bet to break the 200-mph barrier at Atco following an early 191.72-mph run. Garlits was a fan of the strip, telling the Daily News in 1961 that Atco Dragway “is a great one.”

“Just the place for records to be set. It’s real smooth,” Garlits said. “I hear they’ve got a $1,000 prize for anybody who breaks the strip record there. Well, they can start making out the check right now.”

Ultimately, though, Garlits, who hit 200 mph elsewhere by August 1961, wasn’t the first to do it at Atco. That honor went to Art Arfons of Akron, Ohio, who hit 201.78 mph in Cyclops, a famed jet-powered dragster, in May 1962, according to a Daily News report. He would go on to become a three-time land speed record-holder before his death in 2007.

Cyclops “stretched 21 feet long, weighed 5,000 pounds, and looked exactly like a missile on wheels,” the Daily News reported that year. It was run by a J-47 thrust jet engine, which were used in Sabre jets at the time. Arfons, however, was coy about the vehicle’s power, telling the Daily News that it was “just the thing you need to run down to the corner for a loaf of bread.”

And when Arfons broke the 200-mph barrier at Atco, he wasn’t even happy. Instead, he was apologetic.

“I’m sorry I didn’t hit 210 for you,” he told Atco officials after accomplishing the feat, according to the Daily News. “The track was perfect, but the heat was just too much. She just doesn’t run as fast when it’s hot like this.”

By the mid-1970s, drag racing had become a million-dollar sport, growing into a bona fide industry after long being considered “something done by juvenile delinquents,” The Inquirer reported in 1973. In 1972, 4.4 million people attended 2,793 NHRA-sponsored races — a jump in attendance of well over 100% from the decade before, The Inquirer reported.

And while Atco attracted famous racers from around the world, its bread-and-butter wasn’t hotshot dragsters with massive followings. Instead, it was the average Joe of the Greater Philadelphia area.

“It’s a weird situation,” Medvene told The Inquirer in 1973. “ “Drag racing has a universal appeal. Even if they just drive a little Valiant, they can race. Just about everybody at one time or another wants to know just how fast their can go. Here, they can find out and maybe win.”

At the time, Atco Dragway catered to folks with $7 pit tickets, which allowed them to take their cars onto the track and run them. As a result, The Inquirer reported in 1975, it attracted hordes of locals “who like to tear cars apart, put them back together, and see how fast they can go.” The drag strip became a “mom’s-apple-pie slice of Americana,” The Inquirer reported.

Among the average racers of the time was Ed Hartnett, a 26-year-old electrical technician with Philadelphia Electric. He had spent about $7,000 on a souped-up ‘69 Camaro that he regularly raced at the track. For him, the experience seemed almost spiritual.

“It’s over very quickly. The sensation I’m aware of is silence,” Hartnett told The Inquirer. “To me, there’s no other motion. I don’t see the stands. I see the light, and after that, I just feel the car. Time goes so slowly.”

Others, meanwhile, pointed out that Atco Dragway served as an outlet for local drag racers, who previously flocked to highways around Philadelphia to race their vehicles illegally.

“I wish there were more tracks around here so you’d have a place to take out your aggression,” John Conn, 26, of Magnolia, N.J., told The Inquirer in 1975. “Any time you race on the streets, it’s hairy, you know. It’s not recommended.”

While Atco Dragway became famous for its racing, that’s not all it was used for in its 60-plus years in business.

In fact, in the early 1970s, it was a wedding venue at least once.

For a couple of bikers in the Warlocks motorcycle club.

In November 1971, a Philly couple known only as Woody and Laurie were married at Atco Dragway on the same day as the National Motorcycle championships, The Inquirer reported. Woody, a 25-year-old Warlock, married Laurie, then 22, in front of more than 200 Warlock club members from chapters in Philadelphia and it suburbs.

During the ceremony, motorcycles soared down the drag strip — just 40 feet from the wedding site — at more than 160 mph. The stands were filled with spectators, and the bride and groom rode to the altar through two rows of choppers in a bucket-seated buggy.

The Warlocks did not race that day. But top honors went to Dan Johnson, 32, of Yadkinville, N.C., who hit 161 mph in 9.08 on a 107-cubic-inch Harley Davidson.

Woody and Laurie would later be married again before a justice of the peace.

“Mostly for her parents’ sakes,” Woody told The Inquirer.

While ownership of Atco Dragway changed hands a few times throughout the decades, business continued mostly as usual throughout the 1980s, ’90s, and early 2000s. But by August 2020, something was amiss.

That month, the Illinois-based Insurance Auto Auctions submitted a development application to the New Jersey Pinelands Commission to redevelop the drag strip to be “used for an automobile auction facility,” The Inquirer reported. The company had previously purchased the former Raceway Park in Englishtown, just 60 miles north of Atco, and demolished its drag strip.

The application was cosigned by Leonard Capone Jr., Atco Dragway’s owner. He did not comment publicly about the application.

As Philadelphia’s nearest dragway, Atco’s closure would be a big hit to local drag racing lovers, fans said. But many weren’t surprised, saying that drag racing was heavily impacted by the 2008 recession, from which it never recovered. By 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic only worsened the situation, The Inquirer reported.

“With Englishtown going down and now this potentially, I’ve already seen a lot of people selling their cars,” Delco resident and Atco Dragway racer Greg Ditbrenner told The Inquirer. “A lot of people are giving up. From what it sounds like, this is going to happen.”

With Atco Dragway’s closure, The Inquirer reported, the only remaining drag strip in New Jersey would be Island Dragway, about 90 miles north in Warren County. In Pennsylvania, the closest would be Maple Grove Raceway, 50 miles north of Philadelphia in Berks County.

“They don’t want people drag racing on the streets and it’s not safe, but that’s what is going to happen,” one reader wrote on the Facebook page for Dragzine, an online news outlet about drag racing following the announcement of Atco Dragway’s closure. “Please, quit closing all the drag strips!”