Williams Grove Speedway replaced one of its most iconic features during the off-season — its pedestrian bridge. The Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, dirt oval debuted the new bridge last month.
“The bridge being a symbol of Williams Grove Speedway has been enormous in the track’s history by being recognized around the world for 77 years,” said track photographer Troy Junkins. “It is on T-shirts, stickers, posters and countless photos with sprint cars racing beneath it. When you talk about the Grove, you associate the bridge with the track.”
Williams Grove Speedway constructed the first bridge in 1947, eight years after the track opened in 1939.
“The original bridge was painted blue in the 1990s, when [then] track owner Morgan Hughes requested it be painted blue to give it some color,” Junkins said. “It stood out as an icon even more so after it was painted.”
Williams Grove Speedway also shared a few facts about the new bridge.
Bridge Brothers, of Pickens, South Carolina, built the bridge. It came prefabricated and they shipped it to the speedway. They constructed the bridge from steel like the original bridge.
The new bridge offers a 19-foot height clearance at the center. The original bridge only offered 13 feet.
Fans can across over the bridge when no race cars are on the track. The bridge connects the infield with food stands, restrooms, driver merchandise trailers and the spectator hill outside of turn three.
While they painted the old bridge blue, the new bridge does not wear that color. Instead, they designed the bridge to weather and develop a patina to protect it. The process to do that should take roughly a year.
Williams Grove Speedway will host 410 sprint cars and a URC 358/360 Challenge race this weekend, on Friday, April 5. The World of Outlaws Sprint Car Series will race under the new bridge for the first time on May 10-11.
Outside Groove Note of Transparency: Changed the attribution for the information about the bridge (2024-04-03).
Mike Adaskaveg has written hundreds of stories since the website’s inception. This year marks his 54th year of covering auto racing. Adaskaveg got his start working for track photographer Lloyd Burnham at Connecticut’s Stafford Motor Speedway in 1970. Since then, he’s been a columnist, writer, and photographer, in racing and in mainstream media, for several outlets, including the Journal Inquirer, Boston Herald, Stock Car Racing, and Speedway Illustrated. Among Adaskaveg’s many awards are the 1992 Eastern Motorsport Press Association (EMPA) Ace Lane Photographer of the Year and the 2019 National Motorsports Press Association (NMPA) George Cunningham Writer of the Year.
