Abandoned Race Track: Greenwood Roadway - Iowa's ghost circuit still exists (ish)
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 27 ก.ย. 2021
- What happened to Iowa's ghost track? Built in 1963 and abandoned within the same decade, Greenwood Roadway one drew some of the best racers in the United States, even hosting an ex Formula 1 car, pre GT-40 program Ken Miles and Carroll Shelby, and many more. How did this circuit go from jewel of the midwest, to derelict within a span of 4 years? We explore the history of this circuit, and look at what still exists of the old race track today.
Thanks to the following for their contributions to putting together this video:
In-Car Footage from 2013 "revival" event:
This Week With Cars: / thisweekwithcars
Aerial footage:
Devan Scott
Dronography Iowa
Vintage USRRC race footage:
Adam W. with credit to Greenwood Roadway Facebook group
Vintage photos and informational contributions:
Brian Hoskins
Craig Mossberg
Shawn F.
Other anonymous contributors
The Greenwood Roadway Facebook Group
/ greenwoodroadway
Informational Sources:
Des Moines Herald (dead newspaper)
www.greenwoodroadway.com/index...
www.chuckbrandt.com/greenwood...
Lost Road Courses (book by Martin Rudow)
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My grandfather raced here and purchased one of those shares you mentioned to help fund the project. We have been going through old photos and ribbons from then. Great video, and really cool to learn some extra history about its heyday.
Cool
That’s actually a really cool layout
Excellent video. Let's get this track resurrected to modern times.
I would definitely be one of the first through the gate if that happened.
Interesting video, if the resurrected the track I would run there. I spied some DCTC footage in the video.
He he he, yup. Had to sneak something in since I couldn't drive this one. I think it may be the proverbial "snowball's chance" at this point but it looks like it must have been mind-blowing in its day.
I really love these Abandoned Racetrack videos, and the 'Lost Road Courses' book published a few years ago is worth checking out. This was a really well put together video. Thank you for the time and care you put into this project.
Thanks! 'glad you enjoyed the video. LRC is a great book. I didn't pull anything verbatim from it (no plagiarizing of course) but it was a great source of facts/dates and some pretty funny anecdotes about Greenwood. It's "cited" in the description.
This was awesome. I live in Iowa and had no clue. Thank you what a great story
You should do more videos on abandoned and lost race tracks.
I do plan to do more of these and have a list of old circuits that I'd like to visit either as their own trip, or as a stop on the way to an active track.
You've got an awesome channel, and it's cool the owners opened it up back in 2013!
I live about 2 hours drive away from Indianola and had no idea this ever existed. Nice footage, subscribed.
Another one of those never heard of but absolutely brilliant racing cirquits of Your country.. Wow! I don`t love abandoned racing cirquits at all, but love to see how it once was and maybe that it with a little bit of help??? can be some kind of resurrection in the future, I mean it`s there all together!! Thank´s for Your informative and interesting video! Cheers again fron Sweden!
Cooj Video! I echo everyones comments! Thanks. Field of Dreams for Road Racing, indeed!
Its so picturesque looking at it now. It'd be nice to have back but I'd hate to see the changes that'd be needed.
Wow, what a great video, and history lesson. How cool would that track be today, in a VIR kind of way?!! At 3 miles, would be Elkhart Lake’s little brother. Really cool ride along and drone shots showing what’s there… Thanks for posting…
Great video! Feeling like I need to start planning another adventure! XD
Imagine if this track came back maybe even for a racing series like IMSA WeatherTech Sports Car Championship seris
Welcome to Garnett, looking forward to seeing your footage from this weekend!
Thankya! Great hospitality and a fun event. Hope to have something in the next week or so!
I think, without doubt this is the best abandoned racetrack that I've ever seen. It seems to me rather like Brands Hatch but slightly larger. Or perhaps like Laguna without the corkscrew, but two carousels, like the Nurburgring. It's a tragedy this one fell out of use. It needs bringing BACK!!! There is SOOOO MUCH you could do to bring the length of the track down a bit to keep costs down, and put in extra link roads to split off different configurations of short tracks. All with the benefit that there is no existing emotional attachment to different sections that drivers might have. Like to Eau Rouge/Raidillon, or Maggots, or The Rasscasse etc. So you could change the shape of the track without anyone dis-agreeing with the changes. This is just a complete hidden gem. BEAUTIFUL! And that NSX is SICK!
Great video! Thank you for finding these places and sharing the history. Unfortunately that is a horribly designed track. Doesn't matter what direction you're going those outside tires are going to be burnt.
I live in Indianola and dude… I pass by the track all the time. It’s a crazy awesome track layout
awsome !!!
Those banked sections would have been a blast back in the day.
I have been on this track about 10 years ago. There is a Facebook group that has information on the track and with a little searching, information on the status of the track can be found.
I've been a race fan since 1963 and I've never heard of Greenwood. Looks like a real nice road coarse.
It had to have been incredible back in the day.
Fun fact: Deep Forrest Raceway in Gran Turismo is based on this track.
If they bring it back I'm thinking eather a gravel rally track. Or more expensive, a modern FIA standard GT3 and MotoGP approach.
Let me get one of these 😂😂❤
Ok you showed Meadowdale...that's my home track. Would be cool to see a video on that
Yup, I'm definitely aware of Meadowdale. We'll see when I can get up that direction!
Link to his Meadowvale video he showed?
So what you're telling me is we need to start a go fund me to get this track going? This think looks awesome. Edit: this reminds me a bit of the hill climb in the 50s at Rib Mountain in Wisconsin. Only ran once, but had a host of personalities there.
That'd be one hell of a go fund me. We're probably more in the 'seek VC backing' or something like that territory here. 💲🤑💰
If anyone wants to drive this track in a sim, Sergio Loro just released a mod for it on Assetto Corsa :)
Nice! Appreciate the heads-up in the comments for those interested!
I see your footage from 9:45 to approx. 9:58 was from the DCTC track in St. Paul, MN.
Yup. That video is elsewhere on the channel. 'Fun little test track up there!
If someone re-surfaced the track, just cheaply, standard job. It could become a pay to drive circuit. You sign the disclaimer and you got a couple of hours to practise fast times..
An idea I have is ballsy and requires a lot of land work, but might be feasible: rework the perimeter straightaways to be part of a large outer oval, and have the rest of the track be an infield road course.
That'd be tricky indeed given the elevation change between the south and north ends of the property. I think you could definitely accomplish some different configurations though and possibly have some layouts that would allow multiple small events to run at once (a west course and an east course or something) or be combined for larger events.
It only costed them about 2.5 million to build this ?I’ll definitely be building one in my lifetime
Asterisk that was 1964 dollars. Something like $24 million in 2022 adjusted for inflation.
It's a sin to see some good racetracks abandoned like this. Today, there's crowdfunding that may help to bring resources ro make this arena to rise from the grave.
I literally just learned of this track less than an hour of finding this video. Since I live in Des Moines I will try and pay this track a visit. How might one get permission to get on the property as I assume it's privately owned?
So, for the record, I tried a few avenues of contact to get permission to walk the track. As I said towards the end of the video, that proved impossible. They had apparently had some issues with trespassing and allegedly their insurance company won't allow them to open it up. I say 'allegedly' because I believe I hit some gate-keepers that I wasn't able to circumvent in the time I had to make arrangements. I hold no ill will as it's private property and they're free to set their own policies. That said, I won't give them any publicity here. I suspect to make a visit happen you'd either have to be a member of the organization and therefore de-facto insured to be in the facility, or have some pull with their board and/or an ability to self insure. If you look at google maps and locate the track you can find the name of the organization. That is a field office and they have a head office in Des Moines. If you figure something out and can "bring a friend", let me know 😁.
If they want the track to come back.just get Dale Jr. Involved. Nashville Fairgrounds speedway, north Wilkesboro, Rockingham
as a current racer & racing history fan, I can only dream of a world where someone like Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, or Elon Musk was a giant racing fan & just resurrected / modernized tracks like this.
I pass by it all the time on my way to Lacona or Milo. I live in Indianola
If you’re into sim racing then here is the next best thing - Greenwood recreated in Assetto Corsa: th-cam.com/video/39HS5jivST8/w-d-xo.html
Won’t matter if politicians are trying to phase out racing and citizens listen to the complaint of one and just agree with it.
Is this the surprise Iowa sightseeing you teased in the road trip to Oregon?
😇 Yup. Slightly more interesting (to us at least) than the world's largest ball of stamps or whatever.
I swear this looks exactly like deep forest raceway from Gran Turismo
Lots of suspicions oner the years there but it was allegedly debunked as a copy in the interview I mentioned, but they didn't address inspiration or homage in the interview so although it's not a carbon copy, it's hard not to speculate.
Theres a version for Assetto Corsa if anyone is interested
☺
I was thinking why not make this a dirt track and get the track to be for Motocross, the longer track style of racing some do with special bikes for the different classes and even factory spec bikes. Also some of the off road trucks could even race here.
Right, throw some jumps in there and let the stadium trucks loose on it. That or time trial a couple of laps as a mixed surface rally stage.
It seems that PBIR (formerly Moroso motorsports park) is going the way of the dodo bird also.
Dang, I guess I'll see if I can make it down there sooner than later in that case, but hopefully it can be saved.
I live in iowa heard nothing of this track interestingit can get really hot here in the summer you can still see where parts of the track was
It was definitely on the toasty side when we stopped by.
Your Cobra is a Cheetah man
Disqualified? .... Why?
Unfortunate video / narration sync in that clip, I definitely know the difference :)
@@LapoftheWorld ☺
This could have been the America's Nordschleife.
Some of the turns and elevation changes definitely look similar. Just needs another ~10 miles of similar stuff and it'd be in the conversation.
Iowa is a dirt track state, not sure if the track ever would've survived here lol
...But what if it's only a dirt track state because road racing failed to launch in the '60s 😉. (Probably not though and, let's be honest, by volume almost every state is a dirt-track state).
@@LapoftheWorld yes and no, I'm pretty sure we've got the most oval dirt tracks, though we don't have a ton of notable ones. Knoxville and boone being the exceptions of course
@@LapoftheWorld Its unfortunate we don't have a very diverse racing scene nonetheless
The real Watkins
Lasted about as long as the Ruan Grand Prix. Or vise versa. That was due to people saying they wanted to work and not have their business closed down for 3 days.
The organizational skills of Iowa manipulators suck.
They take others ideas and instead of smoothing out the kinks they slam it forward for some pie money not caring if it works, just if their name is tied to it for attention. Then it gets negative reviews by Karen’s and people that didn’t attend or would never attend say good riddance.
If you like being
mind”f”ed move to Iowa.
The politics and money manipulators love their names in the light with others ideas they can destroy and say it didn’t work and never will after they are done with it.
“Iowa the state of mind “f”kery”(should be on our license plate)
I was hoping for the Ryan Grand Prix to go big but safety squirrels ruined it not developing anything better but complete blockage of everything.
I lived in Colorado when the fountain track was built hoping it would be a race complex with a decent road race track but no.
An infield subpar squiggle off of an oval just like the Newton Iowa road race🙄 track.
This country race days are doomed.
They cop tied the Des Moines fairgrounds 1/2 mile dirt track because from what I heard is most tracks nowadays are 3/8th mile dirt tracks and the racers don’t like changing their gearing for one track.
There used to be weekly races in the summer there. Late model, midget, sprint, modified, motorcycle. They had a Winston cup race there.
Just recently they tore it down destroying the track. 😪 and like everything else from my memory as a kid living here wiped out to make room for Chicago natives to build their crime wave on.
There is no Des Moines anymore, just a place for other cities to build and ship their complaints and problems.
Lazy spectators that want to see the same thing every time they attend and not see different parts of a race.
I’m here because there was another motorcycle death and there are no raceways for them to go to.
I’ve heard over the years of driving by that track on the way to Mx races that they were going to bring that track back into existence.
Very unlikely with the politics of this state allowing it. They would …. Never mind it sickens me they extremes they don’t have to go to to squash ideas just because it won’t affect state tax revenue enough. You see having a track in the country could bring money in but not help bigger cities rape it with taxes and manipulatory policy burdens that they sit around and dream up to close down others dreams.
Welcome to Iowa, the Karen state. Unless your gay or farm