Once upon a time, the Cup season started out West

For more than two decades, the Daytona 500 has kicked off the Cup season. But for many years, the NASCAR season started in January -- at California's Riverside International Raceway.

It was Los Angeles restaurateur and sports-car enthusiast Rudy Cleye who got the idea to build a permanent road course track in Southern California. With financing from John Edgar, Cleye found a former turkey ranch near March Air Force Base on which to build his racing facility. The track, which featured a number of different course layouts and a drag strip, was built at a cost of $625,000.

The California Sports Car Club sponsored the first racing weekend in 1957 on the new, nine-turn circuit. Richie Ginther won the first Los Angeles Cup in a Ferrari. Later that year, Carroll Shelby edged Masten Gregory, Walt Hansgen, and a young local driver by the name of Dan Gurney in the first SCCA National Championship races held at Riverside.

NASCAR's debut came the following June, when a 46-car field comprised mainly of West Coast stars, tackled the 2.631-mile road course for 190 laps -- or 499.9 miles. The race took more than six hours to run at an average speed of less than 80 mph. After Parnelli Jones dominated the early going, leading 147 laps before crashing, Gardena's Eddie Gray wound up beating Lloyd Dane by nearly half a lap. Georgia's Jack Smith was third and Lee Petty made the tow from North Carolina to finish fourth. Also in the field for the inaugural race: Ron Hornaday, father of three-time Truck Series champion Ron Hornaday Jr.

Bobby Allison

RIR Career stats

Starts	43
Wins	6
Top-fives	19
Top-10s	25
Poles	5
Avg. Start	7.9
Avg. Finish	10.7

Riverside didn't return to the schedule again until 1961, when Dane made a last-lap pass to win a 100-mile event. Two years later, Riverside took its place as the new year's first race as two racing legends battled it out for the win. Gurney, driving a Holman-Moody Ford, beat A.J. Foyt's Pontiac by 36 seconds, in Foyt's first foray into NASCAR. It was also the NASCAR debut for 18-year-old Joe Ruttman, who was still racing trucks in 2007 at age 62.

Gurney would go on to win four of the next five Riverside season-openers before Richard Petty broke that streak in 1969. In all, Gurney scored six top-10 finishes in nine Riverside starts, and is third all-time in laps lead, trailing only Petty and Bobby Allison.

The first official Winston Cup race was run on Jan. 10, 1971 at Riverside, and it featured a surprise winner. After Richard Petty and David Pearson led much of the first half of the event before retiring with mechanical issues, it was West Coast veteran Ray Elder who passed Bobby Allison with 11 laps remaining to win. Elder would go on to win again at Riverside the next summer, the only victories of his Cup career.

Pearson was the last 500-mile winner at Riverside, as the event was shortened to 500 kilometers for 1977, which Pearson also won in a race run without a caution. Darrell Waltrip won back-to-back season-openers in 1979 and 1980, and Allison -- the all-time leader with six Riverside victories -- won in 1981.

Just behind Allison with five career Riverside wins were Petty, Waltrip and Gurney. And Tim Richmond had great success at Riverside, winning four times in 14 starts.

A change in the schedule starting in 1982 moved Riverside from the beginning to the end of the season. NASCAR's final visit to Riverside came in the 1988 Budweiser 400, when Rusty Wallace edged Terry Labonte and Ricky Rudd.

Dale Earnhardt had 13 top-five finishes at Riverside, but never visited Victory Lane there. He finished second to Darrell Waltrip in 1980 and 1981, and was beaten by Richmond in 1986.

Real estate developer Fritz Duda bought majority interest in the track in 1983 and operated it for the next six years before Riverside closed for good. Most of the property was developed into a shopping mall.