A whole new kind
of racing comes to
St. Clair County
Story by Graham Hadley
Photos by Michael Callahan
and Graham Hadley
Video by Graham Hadley
From private parties to massively popular competition racing, Beaver Creek Offroad Park is St. Clair County’s place for fun in the sun with mud.
When Allison Morgan and her husband, Jason, inherited St. Clair farmland near Vincent that has been in the family since 1823, they knew there was one thing they did not want to do with it — farm.
She is a teacher, and he is an engineer, and while they loved the outdoors and spending their time with their kids outside, they had no desire to plant crops and till the soil.
“I grew up learning to work in the fields, but we don’t have time to do that. We had a garden for awhile, but before you knew it, it was overgrown,” Allison said.
Then one day, while driving to Walmart, like lightning, an idea struck: The property, with an abundance of wet springs and good terrain, would make the perfect outdoor park, complete with a massive serpentine competition ORV mud track with steep banks, a long straightaway and deep mud holes.
“It was an idea that we, me and my husband, had on the way to buy groceries. I was looking online, and all our friends from Pell City were going all over the place to drive in the mud,” she said.
Beaver Creek Offroad Park was born, and mud racing had officially come to St. Clair County.
“We had come up with something that provided family time where we could have fun, and we wanted the public to come out and enjoy the outdoors the way I did growing up. This was a good fit for us,” she said.
The project started out modestly, with just a simple muddy area for riders, but has steadily grown since then.
“The first time we opened, it was just basically a mud hole, but we had 800 to 900 people out here.
“Then we posted on Facebook just to see if people would be interested in having something like this track. We ended up with 40 people on our doorstep who wanted the park. The racers just showed up at 9 at night and asked if we would build them a place to race,” Allison said. “We did not know what they were talking about, so we researched online.”
From the word “go”, the park was a success — and since both Allison and Jason were new to the sport of mud racing, there was an admittedly steep learning curve.
“We started on the track in August and worked through September and October 2013. Then the racers showed up, and we had our first race in April 2014,” Allison said. “We had an excellent turnout. We were kind of shell-shocked by the number of people who came out. We were understaffed; we had no clue what was coming.
“Since that day, we have learned a tremendous amount about running these kinds of events and this sport.”
On average, they can easily see 800 people at the park in a single weekend, with bigger events drawing even more.
Those big events can include truck racing, ATVs, side-by-sides, sometimes combined with a music fest where they play everything from country to hip-hop. The music events are taking on a life of their own, with an emerging style of music that actually combines those two disparate music styles becoming especially popular with the mud-racing crowd.
Allison says the park is making money, but they are not pocketing the profits. She has put her teaching career on hold to run the park, while Jason works as a plastics engineer supporting the family. The extra money the park earns goes into expanding the park and building on the already solid business foundation.
“It is a work in progress. I don’t know if we will ever be finished in our eyes. We are always working on something,” Allison said.
“I put my dreams as a teacher on hold for this, but it has been a success. We are still in the process where we are growing and expanding, so every dime we make at the park is turned around and invested in the park. I believe 100 percent it will be a financial success, but we are not calling it that yet because we are still investing in making the park the best it can be.”
Family Fun
A key to that success is the family-inclusive nature of the park, with a focus on providing a place where people of all ages can experience the outdoors. Allison and Jason want a place where they can have fun with their children and where other families can do the same.
“Family time is important. It’s kind of our motto: This is a family place. We want to be able to bring our kids out there,” Allison said.
“It took awhile for people to realize our dedication to the family environment. We have been fortunate that we have not really had any problems. The fans respect what we are trying to do. The people show up, respect our rules — they have an amazing time. It is turning into a great thing.”
Race Day
That family atmosphere was pervasive at one recent mud-racing event April 19. Everywhere you looked, people were out riding around the park with their kids, cooking out with their families and watching as the specialized trucks raced against the clock and each other through the track, several areas of which were full of many feet of water thanks to days of heavy rain.
For the Morgans, they were hard at work as a family supervising everything — a busy job for Allison, who was running the concessions, and Jason, who was down in the pit area keeping the drivers and their crews organized.
And many of those teams were family and friends themselves, often racing against each other in different trucks.
Eddie Blevins from Shelby, Ala., said he just started racing last year.
Pointing to the stands, he said, “I used to be up there watching. Now I have not missed a race here.”
With pit support from his son Cale, Blevins had a solid showing with his truck Never Satisfied — “We did pretty well, won two and lost one” of the races.
At a previous race, they had won almost $1,000. For Blevins, that’s a win-win situation however you look at it. “You get paid to get out here and do something you love,” he said.
The winnings from those races can add up quickly — something that is important in a sport where the price of vehicles can hit the $40,000 range or more for the higher-end trucks.
But many drivers, like Blevins, are fielding much more affordable rides.
One young man who had just turned 15 was racing that day — and winning — in a truck he and his friends, with help from his father and family, had built literally out of spare parts for almost nothing.
David Matzke pointed proudly to his son Austin, saying, “He won his first race today. He turned 15 Friday. We probably have $1,000 in that truck.”
Austin grew up watching his Dad drag race. “He always wanted to race, so I taught him mechanics. We built this truck in two weeks.”
David said he is a huge fan of the mud racing scene and the family-friendly environment Allison and Jason are fostering at Beaver Creek.
“I love to see the kids out here doing this. Out of everything they could be out doing, this is a good thing to do,” he said.
Travis Perkins from Columbiana, who is also in his second year of mud racing, and Brian Johnson said the Beaver Creek track fills out the area perfectly. With two other regional tracks, Beaver Creek makes three. That lets them rotate venues every week or so without having to travel all over the Southeast to keep a regular racing schedule.
“We love it here. Allison and Jason Morgan, they are good people. If it was not for them, we would not be out here,” Johnson said.
While mud racing may be the big draw, with music fests a close second, the 150-acre park also has paths for ATVs and other off-road and off-highway vehicles, room for camping and other outdoor activities.
Allison says they are looking at finding a way to also eventually add rock climbing to the park. That’s not the people clambering up cliffs with ropes kind of climbing, that’s the specialized off-road vehicle clambering up piles of boulders kind of climbing.
“We are improving; we are expanding; we are making things out here that we need,” Allison said.
“I think this year is going to be great.”
The track is located at 139 Beavers Lane, just off U.S. 231 south of the Logan Martin Dam road
between Pell City and Vincent.
You can find it online @ beavercreekoffroad.com
and follow it on Facebook.
