I moved to Norfolk 15 years ago, and only found the old BMX track at Northside Park last winter. Since it's only a couple miles from my house, it's a nice spin over on my singlespeed 29'er mountain bike. I enjoy honing my bike handling skills on the soft, bermed turns, but it's been so long since the track was properly maintained or raced that it's hard to tell what exactly the layout was. I saw some pix posted by Popeye on Photobucket of Eastern VA BMX courses, but I wasn't entirely sure that I was looking at Northside Park- the course was so brown that it looked more like SoCal than Tidewater Virginia.

Can anyone provide pix that show the broad layout of Northside Park back in the day? There are still a fair number of berms out there, but I wonder if some of the taller features have been levelled. Can anyone provide any history on Northside Park? When did it fall into disuse, and why? Did it wane with the BMX fad, or was it a municipal government directive?

Sorry I missed this post when you put it up.

I have never been there. I think that track closed down sometime in the early 80's. I remember other Hampton riders that raced there saying that all it originally had was a couple of switchbacks and all the jumps were drop-offs. Someone told me that because the track was located on a landfill, the city would not let them dig there, and that they had railroad ties as the bases for everything on the track.
Sometime in 1993 or '94, a guy named Bill Calhoun said that he talked to the city about rebuilding the track there. I think he did a lot of work out there, but they never got anything near to having a track built, and never held a race on it. Everyone just started going to Ipswitch as the place to be about that time.
Haven't been out there in several years but I think Ipswitch it is still a pretty cool place to ride.