YORK COUNTY, Pa. — Although the York US 30 Drag Strip hasn’t been raced on in 44 years, there are a few ways history is being preserved from the pride of the east.
One way is bringing an old Central Pa. team together for the first time in decades.
There’s a unique story sitting in a Littlestown garage. This space houses two cars that used to race on the old York U.S. 30 drag strip.
Both were mostly nothing but the chassis when Randy Davis of Littlestown first saw them. He spotted the 1933 Willies when he was still in grade school, making it necessary for his parents to help co-sign.
“It didn’t matter because I knew what I wanted and I knew what I could do with the car. And it took years, it was close to 25 years before I got all the parts to put it together and the money," explained Davis.
He turned an empty frame into a complete car. But after the Willies, he was itching for more and came across a 1939 Studebaker. Those two cars had one thing in common... they were raced by the same driver.
The Boss was a proven winner in York. It was a five-time record holder at U.S. 30 and reached 114.64 miles per hour at the nationals in Indy.
Davis took a unique angle in restoring the old gasser.
“He gave me 115 slides of when they used to race and when they built it,” he recalled.
Every piece on the car is exactly what it was when Hanover’s Charlie Garrett piloted The Boss… and asked for input from the crew.
“Randy had us out a few times asking us, 'Is this right, is that right?' when he was building to get it as original as it once was," said Bill Hull, an Eliminator racing team crew member. "I want to thank Randy and Yvonne, because if it wouldn’t have been for them, we would have never all got back together.”
Decades after racing together, it was an Eliminator race team reunion.
But it didn’t stop there.
“We painted it to look like the original tow vehicle that towed our Studebaker, to the racetrack, from 1962 to 1966," said Randy's wife, Yvonne.
“All of us would jump in there and away we would go," recalled Hull.
A replica 1956 Chevy Carryall hauled the team across the states. Putting the full package together just like they had 60 years ago.
The old boss was a hot commodity, not just locally but nationally, being featured on the front page of Hot Rod Magazine.
There’s even a section in the Eastern Museum of Motorsports dedicated to the diggers. Nostalgic pieces from U.S. 30 live in the museum alongside actual cars that raced on that very strip -- from Dauphin County’s Bruce Larson’s Funny Car to a 1966 Chevelle.
“It’s pretty much a full-time job for me to preserve the history of automotive racing in the eastern United States," said Jeff Golden with the Eastern Museum of Motorsports. “That’s what we’re striving to do because things change and it’s neat to have the history, especially the artifacts and the real things you can see and touch that were here 50 [to] 60 years ago.”
The drag racing section was phase three of the museum's construction, opening in April of 2012. Although U.S. 30 hasn’t been raced on in 44 years, visitors can still watch previous meets and take everything in, as if they were there in the 60s and 70s.
The museum is a heavy favorite among motorsports enthusiasts. There’s a waiting list to put cars on display, which is changed annually, during the offseason.