This is perhaps presumptuous but I am going to tell you why this site and what Jeff Gilder is doing is so very important to racing.

I was in the Fingerlakes of New York State over the weekend of October 15, 2010. On Wednesday, October 20, I stopped in Apalachin, NY on my way back to Florida to visit with Dale Campfield. Campfield was once the promoter of Shangri-La Motor Speedway in Owego, NY and I worked for him doing PR in the early 90s.

Shangri-La was a half mile asphalt track that raced NASCAR modifieds at that time. The track was closed in 1998 because of some legal problems but it was opened once or twice since then by people trying to keep it alive. Those reopenings didnt last long and it eventually closed for good.

The track was built over land that was rich in gravel and stone. When Campfield purchased the track he bought all the improvements there. He bought the track surface, the grandstands, the buildings and he added a few improvements of his own. He paved the entrance road and placed a couple of mobile homes next to track buildings to serve as offices. According to him, a legal settlement was supposed to prevent the land under his improvements from being touched when it closed in 98.

After sitting around telling each other some lies, as old guys like us are known to do, and telling each other how great we each were we took a ride down to the track. The track sign still sits along Route 17c in Owego but time has taken its toll on it. We walked down the entrance road and every where I could see in front of me and to both sides the field that was once a parking lot was overgrown with weeds thorn bushes, and small trees starting to grow.

We were able to work our way through the vines and thorn bushes to get into the grandstands and I immediately saw that the asphalt that was once the track had been torn up and was in little pieces mixed in with the dirt. All the grandstands were still there, as was the scoring tower and the starters stand. I could see the concrete wall in front of me but not much more than that because it was a foggy morning.

Campfield talked and I listened, and we drifted into some of the good times we had at the track. The fog was lifting and I took another look at the track. When I looked over at the starters stand again I was shocked at what I saw. Just past it there was a 30 to 40 foot deep canyon. All of the rest of the front stretch, turns one and two, and most of the backstretch were gone, replaced by this huge canyon. About all that was left was the apex of turns three and four, turn four itself, and the first part of the home stretch leading up to the starters stand.

The only way I could tell this part that was left was because the concrete wall was still there. You could not tell from the ground and if you had never been there you would not have been able to tell just by looking at it that it was once part of a race track.

I walked back out the drive, which had a mound of dirt about 3 feet high all the way out to the highway. Curious, I worked my way through the weeds, vines and thorn bushes. I looked over the top and found another 30 to 40 foot canyon dropping down just on the other side of that mound. There will never be another car parked there again. The canyon went all the way to where the sign along the highway is.

It was a fall day and it brought me back to another time at the track. I was writing columns for Gater Racing News at the time. It was early October and we had just finished the season. I penned a column about walking the track as the lights were being turned off, listening to the breeze blowing through the trees and the sound of trucks up on what is now an Interstate but is still known as Route 17. My point in that column was how just a few hours earlier the air was filled with the sounds of growling modifieds and the cacophony of fans as the race ended. The track was, I thought as I walked it, silent until the next spring. It was sad but also fulfilling because we had had a pretty successful season.

As I stood there on this day, looking at that huge canyon, the track was silent again and I heard the wind and the trucks again up on the highway. This time there was nothing but sadness. I realized just how much history is gone forever.

Guys like Jimmy Spencer, Greg Sacks, Jerry Cook, Richie Evans, Charlie Jarzombek and, Im told, Mario Andretti raced on this track. So may other great Northeast drivers did too. All of that history is gone. Lost forever. Unless someone has kept all the race programs or somehow has the pieces of paper with race lineups and results, in a short period of time no one will ever know that Shangri-La existed. Those of us who were a part of it will be gone and Shangri-La will not matter to anyone. Some of the people I knew from there have already died, and its just a matter of time before the rest of us are gone.

It is too late for Shangri-La, but with the passion of Jeff Gilder and those of you who have spent your time helping him to preserve history, a few other tracks have been saved or their memories have been preserved.

It is sad to write this but necessary. If you can help Jeff and others with a historical track or provide historical information on tracks that are gone, you will be doing a great service not just to us old timers who are still around, but to those young people who are now developing a love of racing. You see, the track is the farmland where our heroes were planted and sowed, and where we cultivated our love of racing. It is the history of great times, terrible times, and a glimpse into the future of motorsports.

I never knew until that visit to Shangri-La how invested I was in the track. Its history is gone and, I realize, so is a piece of my own life.