History
In the late 1940s, the dirt-surfaced Breckenridge Oval opened on the site. In 1952, the oval was shortened and paved as a 1/4 mile asphalt oval, and the facility was renamed Speedway Park. The oval had seating for 8,000.
In 1967, the 1/4 mile drag strip opened, and had a full length of 4,350 feet (1,326 m). The following year in 1968, the road course opened in time for the first Can-Am race. Over the years, the facility also hosted Formula Atlantic, Formula 1600, Formula 5000, Trans-Am, as well as NHRA-sanctioned drag racing.
Qualico Developments was the track owner in the latter years, and closed the track in 1982 to convert the land to housing. Edmonton would be without any form of professional racing until Capital City Raceway Park opened in 1991.
David Cronenberg's 1979 movie Fast Company was primarily filmed at Edmonton International Speedway.
Read more about this topic: Edmonton International Speedway
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“When the landscape buckles and jerks around, when a dust column of debris rises from the collapse of a block of buildings on bodies that could have been your own, when the staves of history fall awry and the barrel of time bursts apart, some turn to prayer, some to poetry: words in the memory, a stained book carried close to the body, the notebook scribbled by hand—a center of gravity.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)
“The principle that human nature, in its psychological aspects, is nothing more than a product of history and given social relations removes all barriers to coercion and manipulation by the powerful.”
—Noam Chomsky (b. 1928)
“The history of the world is none other than the progress of the consciousness of freedom.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)