Pilgrimage To Meadowdale

Ghost of Good Times Past: aerial view of Meadowdale today.  McMansions and subdivisions were not there then.  Meadowdale is now "Raceway Woods," a Forest Preserve just north of West Dundee, IL.

Meadowdale was a great track with a too-short run, from 1958 to 1969.  It was long and fast: 3.3 miles with a 3/4-mile long front straight.  The straight was downhill after you'd picked up a good head of steam past the pits, but there was a rise at its end, which made initial braking and entry into "Little Monza" blind.  Can-Am cars never ran at Meadowdale, and might have become airborne here if they had.

The course had other safety issues: cars passed each other in opposite directions on the Back Straight, separated only by a guardrail.  A wreck halfway down the main straight might have spilled over the embankment onto the backside of the course below.  A wreck in Greg's Corkscrew might have spilled onto a public highway.  Both Monza bankings were guestimated, not engineered.  (Although, in its day, Meadowdale had a reputation for being a dangerous track, its record of fatalities was average.)

Meadowdale was built by a Chicago real estate developer who owned large tracts in the (then) far northwest suburbs, and wanted to draw attention to the area.  He named the bends after his children.  Previously it had been marginal farmland.  Shaw Creek bisected the Long Straight and the exit of Silo Turn.  The creek ran through culverts covered with fill--a lot of it in the case of the Long Straight.  The same topography that made it marginal farmland made it a fine road course.   

This track map is easier on the eyes.  The straight was level past the pits, then went downhill through Little Monza, the Silo Turn, and Len's Hairpin.  Then uphill to and through Serpentine, and Steffan's Straight (a sweeper).  The Back Straight and Doane's Corner were level, at the same elevation as the pit straight.  Monza Wall's base was too.

Meadowdale had the advantage of being just northwest of Chicago--an easy tow from as far east as Buffalo and Pittsburgh, and as far west as Minneapolis and St. Louis.  This area of the upper midwest was a hotbed of SCCA racing at the time.  It had the disadvantage of being within two hours of Road America, already established as a long, fast, track that was a driver favorite.  The powerful Chicago Region of the SCCA favored Road America.  So Meadowdale struggled from the beginning.  Adding USAC sports car and NASCAR races to the calendar in 1960 and 1961 didn't help: the SCCA was then hostile to pro racing and promoters who supported it.

Meadowdale got big SCCA races with fine entries in 1958, 1959, 1964, and 1968.  But it didn't get two major races per year like Road America, and it failed to get regular dates for the new SCCA pro races like the Can Am and the Trans Am in the mid and late 1960's.  The Track Trivia section in the photo above tells the story of Meadowdale's decline.  Abandoned, the property turned into an illegal dump.  Between 1994 and 2002, local authorities purchased outright or obtained set-asides of 327 acres.  In 1998 restoration of the area as a Forest Preserve began.  Today a bike trail in Raceway Woods Park follows the original course.  Once or twice a year, car clubs gather for shows or to honor Meadowdale's glory days.

Of all the purpose-built circuits of the late '50's and early '60's that went under later, Riverside Raceway's demise (in CA) is most sad--because of its significance to the history of road racing in the U.S.  But Meadowdale is a close second for me.  Most of the rest of them were shorter and slower, with less elevation change, and thus less challenging.  (Riverside and Meadowdale had some common features in their layouts.)  But, to continue a theme from some recent posts, Meadowdale had to change or go, even if it had been a financial success.  It's hard to see how evolving standards of passive safety could have been met without destroying the character of the course.  For example, Little Monza and Greg's Corkscrew would have had to go: no room for a runoff area and too close to a public highway.

But, to look on the bright side, Meadowdale's history is preserved and visible, and area residents have 300 acres of open space.  Riverside is now subdivisions and a shopping mall: it truly "went under."

If you want to know more, here's a link: http://meadowdaleraceway.homestead.com/

A Lotus Eleven enters Little Monza at the end of the Long Straight, first race at Meadowdale, September, 1958.

Jim Jeffords entering Silo in his Scarab.  Scarabs won the big-bore modified race three years in a row at Meadowdale.

The Silo Turn today.  The course followed the gravel path, not the current tarmac.

Jefford's Scarab being chased off Steffan's Straight onto the "Uphill" by Doc Wylie's Lola Mark I.

The "Uphill" today.  The trees on the left are about where the flag station was in the picture above.