1960 Empire State 200 Video - #42 & #43 with World Class Tail Fins!!

In 1960 the Empire State 200 NASCAR Grand National event was held on runways at the Stewart Air Force Base in Montgomery, New York, upriver from West Point on the Hudson River.

The winner was Rex White clearly seen in this old color film driving the beautiful #4 Chevy we've all grown to love at the various shows and reunions where it appears today.

2nd place went to Richard Petty and 3rd place to Lee Petty. Both are very visible in the film. Lee loses it, knocks down the hay bales and slides right toward the camera in #42... all tail fins!!

Also visible is Jim Reed in his blue Chevy #7.

Starting on the pole for this event was John Rostik of Fort Collins, Colorado, one of just 6 career GN starts. Of his five 1960 events, he won the pole for this event and won ythe race in Phoenix, Arizona.

A few other cars I've been able to pick out are:

#8 - Lennie Page

#11 - Red - Ned Jarrett

#19 - Herman Beam

# 54 - Jimmy Pardue - With LOWE"S sponsorship long before Jimmy Johnson, Junior Johnson or Richard Childress!! - Jimmy was from Lowe's former corporate headquarters town of North Wilkesboro, NC.

#80 - Neil Castles

#83 - Curtis Crider

Help me to see who else you can pick out.

Very historic footage here.

Photo taken of Rex White, the race winner prior to start of 1960 Empire State 200.

Photo from Mike Clements, son of car owner/mechanic Louie Clements:

Here's some information posted with the YouTube video:

Stewart Air Force in Newburgh N.Y. (Montgomery Co. Airport) hosted NASCAR events in the late 1950's and 60's

EMPIRE STATES 200..... at Mongomery Co. Airport (Stewart Air Force Base)
July 17, 1960
1.9 concrete tri oval made up of runways

Here are some movie footage of that race. I cant figure out the layout of the track where on the property the race was held. Looking at a 1975 satelite image on http://www.historicaerials.com/ Make sure you are looking to the airport to the right. Thre are 2 airports close in that area.

Veiwing this movie footage, there are hills and mountians in the back round and at the end of the clip a farm can be seen in the backround.

Can anyone in this area give me an idea where the track was by matching up backrounds or doing some research?

Jim Reed raced in this event and I was told that he is the current maintenence man at Orange Co. Fairgrounds Speedway.

1 Rex White 4
2 Richard Petty 43
3 Lee Petty 42
4 Ned Jarrett 11
5 Buck Baker 87
6 Lennie Page 8
7 John Rostek 1
8 Bob Duell 95
9 Herman Beam 19
10 L.D. Austin 74
11 Jimmy Pardue 54
12 Buddy Baker 20
13 Jim Reed 7
14 Crawfish Crider 83
15 Neil Castles 80
16 Ken Johnson 56
17 Eddie Riker 0
18 Bunkie Blackburn 64
19 Jim Whitman 60
Category:

Sports
Tags:

Old
Speedways
1960
NASCAR
AT
STEWART
AIR
FORCE
BASE
001

License:

Standard YouTube License

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Rex got the pole for this one and won the race too. After the race, Jim Reed came over and asked my dad which cam he had in Rex's engine. My dad gave him the phone number to Frank McGurk's shop and told him that Frank ground the cam. Jim got even quicker on the short tracks after that. It was cool that the racers would actually help each other in those days.

the4xchamp 1 month ago

Robbie,

Looking at the information from the link below, it sounds like they raced on a nearby auxiliary field.

http://books.google.com/books?id=6Qmu8Wio2m0C&pg=PA175&lpg=PA175&dq=stewart+air+force+base+montgomery,+ny+nascar+race&source=bl&ots=a7nKjdsmU6&sig=z-aI0DAv5mX7MbiOVgCFC-tbfgs&hl=en&sa=X&ei=2wixT6PaJYqg8gTmxPD1CA&ved=0CHUQ6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q=stewart%20air%20force%20base%20montgomery%2C%20ny%20nascar%20race&f=false

Lee and Jim Reed were both scattering some hay bales, weren't they? And I bet the photographer with the 8mm home movie camera was right on top of the action with no close up lens!

From Florida, RR member and friend Bill McPeek shares this fascinating information about the Empire State 200:

Thanks, Bill....

You were asking if anyone knew where the race was laid out relative to the AFB. I was stationed at Griffis AFB in Rome,NY at that time and was asked if I wanted to volunteer to go down there for that race and assist in traffic and parking. I turned it down because I was working on my 37 Plymouth Sportsman car. Regret it also. lol.

I have flown into Stewart a couple times and the Original Runway was just left of North/South a few degrees. When The Stewart Family donated the land for the AFB in the 30's the Air Force laid out a 10,000 ft runway that ran almost East/West and intersected the original just south of the center line. The main Air Force taxi way was south of the new runway and the ramps and terminal was south of that as I remember. There was a few small rolling hill's off the S.E. end of the old existing runway.

In my opinion there would have been only one way they could have held a Race and that would have been to use the south end of the old runway as a straight and the eastern part of the main ramp as the other straight with parts of the taxi ways as the ends.

The Air Force was very friendly to cities at that time and I can see them agreeing to do this on the part of the facility they owned. In fact when I was at Andrews AFB from 1957-1960 they would hold sports car gymkhana's on a 6,000' taxiway behind my barracks. I remember in 1958 Gen. Curtis LeMay brought his silver Mercedes Gull Wing out and beat some of the pilot's in their TR's, Morgans and assorted sports cars.

A bit of additional info about Stewart AFB. It now has a runway that's 15,000' long and that make's it the longest in the eastern USA.