Operating
Nelson's Ledges Road Course
Nelson's Township, OH
2.0
Miles
7
Major turns
162
Acres
1958
Opened
Photo sources
Track photos only. Credits stay with the shooters.
On this page — open file
- Facility aerial, 2018 — Michael Garriga, CC BY-SA 4.0 (hero +
Wikimedia_Nelsons_2018_Aerial-1.jpg)
On this page — credited, not Commons
GRMS_NL4.jpg— club cars and the tire wall. Filename points at Grassroots Motorsports. Caption: Photo via Grassroots Motorsports. Ask GRM / Mark Windecker if you keep it.NL_2.jpg— overhead of cars lined through the Carousel.NL_3.jpg— drone of the Carousel, two cars on the ribbon.NL_4.png— black-and-white Le Mans start, 24 Hours of Nelson Ledges motorcycle race.NL_5.jpg— HPDE pack, Subaru #65, Mustang, BMW.NL_6.jpg— Longest Day pit/grid. Car and Driver Mazda #26, “25 Years of Car and Driver.” Period magazine still.NL_7.jpg— two bikes, #65 and #644.NL_8.jpg— two bikes, purple #462 and red #366.
“I am simply the caretaker of this place.”
Brian Ross · Grassroots Motorsports
How to read this record
- Status — Operating / Closed / For sale describes the venue’s public state, not a campaign.
- Category — Road courses live under Road Courses. Dirt ovals and clay plants live under Dirt Courses.
- Three desks — Operator runs race days. Landowner holds the deed or lease. Land-use body is the city or township that zones the parcel. They are often three different names.
- Postal city ≠ government — Mailing brands (Clarkston, Rossburg, New Weston, etc.) are not always the zoning desk. Trust the town box on this page.
- Specs — When club figures and reviews disagree (turns, mileage), we print both. We do not invent a single number.
- Gifts — A donation to Save Tracks Dot Org Foundation funds this cited record. It does not buy land and is not a gift to the operator or landowner. (Example: OCSC at Waterford is a 501(c)(4) — gifts there are not 501(c)(3) deductible.)
- Corrections — Tip or source fix → Contact (topic: Correction / source).
Operating · Garrettsville / Nelson, Ohio
10342 State Route 305, Garrettsville, OH 44231
Nelson Township, Portage County
Opened 1958 on dirt · paved early 1960s · 2.0 miles
A potato farm, a lawyer, a mechanic, and a bulldozer. No architect. After Pitt Race closed, this is the club road course northeast Ohio still has.
Help keep this record public
A gift does not buy Nelson’s Ledges. What it does: keep the record on the tracks still running and the ones that just closed.
DonateWhy this track matters
Ohio’s public road-course map just got simpler. Pitt Race is closed. Mid-Ohio is the national plant. Nelson is the other one. Two miles. One hundred sixty-two acres. A kid who didn’t know the place existed bought it in 2015 and resurfaced it on a gamble. Chin Track Days now lists it as a Pitt Race replacement. That is the scarcity.
This circuit invented habits the rest of the country copied. Tire walls, stacked scrap from Goodyear in Akron, the first U.S. track fully lined with them. Member days. A 24-hour race for cars that still had license plates. Carroll Smith called the Longest Day a sociological phenomenon.
Closest purpose-built road course to Cleveland. About forty-five minutes east. Mid-Ohio is ninety-plus miles west. Nelson Township wrote motorsports into the code: EMC-1, Entertainment Motor Sports Commercial. The place is zoned for what it is.
What they built
1958. Attorney Marvin Drucker and mechanic John McGill cut a one-mile dirt loop on Drucker’s potato farm. The official about page says there was no design plan and no architect. Two men and a dozer.
Early 1960s. Paved. The official site dates the Carousel to 1962. Wikipedia and RacingCircuits put the big extension, Turn 4 through a long triple-apex right, new back straight, Gulf Oil money, in 1970, which is when the lap became two miles. Both dates are in the record.
Bridge later. Pit lane extended. Tires stacked outside the guardrail because Akron was next door. RacingCircuits calls it the first American circuit completely lined with tire walls.
2015–18. Brian Ross and Brian Ross Jr. buy it. Brian was twenty-six. Grassroots Motorsports: dumpsters, derelict motorhomes hauled off, full resurface, concrete pit walkway, drainage, runoff. First event under the new owners, June 2016, a track day. “No one showed up.” ChampCar came back in 2018. SCCA recertified in 2020.
The numbers
- Property: 162 acres
- Length: 2.0 miles
- Turns: seven major; club sheets also count thirteen apexes
- Direction: clockwise
- Surface: asphalt, full resurface after the Ross purchase
- Signature: the Carousel, a long triple-apex right. Back-straight kink. Blind crests. Trees tight to the ribbon
- No published elevation sheet. Farm-flat with crests, not Thunder Valley
Local racing scene
Northeast Ohio’s home club track. Neohio SCCA and Mahoning Valley run regionals, time trials, and Track Night. NASA has used it. When Pitt Race shut, those calendars slid east on Route 305.
Motorcycles never left. AMA Nationals in 1964–65. The 24-hour bike race from 1968. Fasttrax and WERA still own summer weekends.
Who uses the place
- Nelson Ledges track days with Reed Kryder
- Fasttrax
- WERA
- AHRMA
- ChampCar — back in 2018
- SCCA — recertified 2020
- Chin Track Days
- Xtreme Xperience
History
1958. Dirt. Potato farm. Drucker and McGill.
1964–65. AMA National Lightweight road races.
1968. 24 Hours of Nelson Ledges for motorcycles.
1970. Gulf money. Lap nearly doubles. Tire walls. SCCA still hands out a John McGill Award.
1975–77. Trans-Am. Greenwood, Follmer, Hagestad.
1980. Longest Day of Nelson. Showroom stock. Sixteen seasons of factory-backed door-slammers and club heroes, including Janet Guthrie and Danny Sullivan. Paul Newman raced here. Other celebrity names on the track’s own list stay campfire talk until they’re cited.
1997. Surface dies. Longest Day stops. SCCA pulls the sanction.
December 2015. Ross family closes.
2020. SCCA back.
2026. Gates open.
What’s next
Still privately owned. Still a farm track with a Carousel. Ross did not flip it. Mid-Ohio has Honda and a tower. This place has a caretaker, a tire wall, and a calendar that filled after Pitt Race went dark. That is the honest line.
The town that hosts it
Land-use decisions for Nelson’s Ledges sit with Nelson Township (Portage County), not with SaveTheTracks. The circuit’s commercial zoning district is EMC-1 Entertainment Motor Sports Commercial. No public events RSS exists — use the set zoning date and contacts below.
Land-use body & zoning
Nelson Township
9231 State Route 305, Garrettsville, OH 44231
330-527-5142
Zoning Inspector — Jackie Kable
330-527-5142
nelsontownshipzi@aol.com
Set meetings & calendar
Zoning Commission: third Thursday each month, 6:30 PM
Community house · Nelson Township
Zoning Board of Appeals: meets as needed for appeals and variances. Ask the zoning inspector for the next hearing date.
- Email Jackie Kable for the current zoning book and any EMC-1 filings
- Do not confuse the circuit with Nelson-Kennedy Ledges State Park
We publish the public record. We do not lobby the board.
Help keep this record public
A gift does not buy VENUE. What it does: keep the record on the tracks still running and the ones that just closed.
DonatePhoto sources
- Michael Garriga — aerial / facility views — CC BY-SA 4.0 (Wikimedia Commons).
- Photo via Grassroots Motorsports (GRMS_NL4) — track / event archive use on this page only.