In California, the ghosts of Ontario are never far away

ONTARIO, Calif. -- At first glance it's just a stubby hillock in one corner of a vacant lot, nothing more than a pile of dirt at the intersection of Fourth Street and Haven Avenue. But stare long enough, and you can almost see it. Make the hill a little larger, coat the inside edge in asphalt, and you just might have what some locals believe is the only remaining trace of the most magnificent NASCAR racetrack of its time.

These days it's a commercial park, a bustling collection of banks, hotels and real estate offices alongside Interstate 10. But three decades ago it was the infield of Ontario Motor Speedway, which billed itself as "the world's most modern and beautiful racing facility," and by many accounts fully deserved the title. A $25 million reproduction of Indianapolis, the 2.5-mile rectangular oval had everything -- individual Formula One-style garages, a year-round restaurant, an escalator (a first for a racetrack) and a sound system capable of pumping out more watts than the one at Cape Canaveral.

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"It was way ahead of everybody. It still is," said veteran racer James Hylton, a two-time winner on NASCAR's premier circuit. "Nobody has come up to that standard yet, as far as I'm concerned. You had your own individual garage. They weren't all together like they are now. Every car had its own stall. I don't know if that was good or bad, but it sure was nice to have you own little private garage you could drive into. It was super. It was surely a super speedway."

It was a place ahead of its time -- too ahead of its time. Too lavish and too heavily leveraged, the racing palace that was Ontario became a financial disaster, and was eventually sold by the city to a land management company for $10 million, less than half of the speedway's original cost. The entire place, from its Indy-like brick winner's circle to its Daytona-like main grandstand, was bulldozed. Now all that remains is what may or may not be the old Turn 3 banking, and street names like Ferrari, Porsche, Mercedes and Duesenberg that convey memories of the cars that once raced there.

Kyle Petty remembers visiting the track while it was still under construction in 1970, and being shocked to see palm trees in the infield. "It was the first racetrack I'd ever seen that had palm trees in the infield," said Petty, a teenager at the time, in the area because his father Richard was competing at nearby Riverside International Raceway. "I'd never been to a racetrack where they had trees in the infield. They didn't have any trees in the infield at North Wilkesboro."

It had much more than palm trees. Petty, who along with Ricky Rudd are the only active Nextel Cup drivers to have raced at Ontario, remembers suites topped with viewing platforms and murals of open-wheel cars in the lobby. Before the first NASCAR race there, motorcycle stuntman Evel Knievel entertained the massive crowd by jumping 19 cars. Petty bought a pair of sunglasses just like the daredevil wore.

"It had a speedway club-type atmosphere, it had suites, it had all that stuff before Humpy Wheeler ever thought about doing it," said Petty, referring to the president of Lowe's Motor Speedway, which now features many of the same amenties Ontario did decades ago. "It was the kind of racetrack that if it was still here, you could plug it into the schedule and say, 'Gosh, that's a nice place.' It would compete against any racetrack we have now." (Continued)