The landscape at Indy has changed significantly over the years, from when the DA Lubricants Tower sat where today's Top Eliminator Club lives through the building of the famed Parks Tower and later the grandstand-topping skybox suites, and it's always one of my Indy rituals to take a good thorough tour around the facility to see old haunts and remember those no longer here.

The track has been around since the facility was built on a 267-acre farm purchased by local businessmen in 1958. Originally designed to host only a 15-turn, 2.5-mile road course, a dragstrip was added almost as an afterthought, but by 1961 had become the new home of the NHRA Nationals after a two-year ruin in Detroit. The NHRA purchased the entire facility in 1979.

The DA tower was moved to the top end and later over to the adjacent oval track. The tower stood for years just past the finish line on the left side of the track served as a great vantage point for top-end photographers, and I shared many memorable afternoons there with the likes of Steve Reyes, the Indianapolis Star's Vern Atkins, and others. I have some great photos in my collection of Indy mishaps.

My first trip to Indy wasn't for the U.S. Nationals, but rather the SPORTSnationals that were held here in May 1983. The parks tower was just a steel skeleton then, but a revolutionary one at that, and one copied many times over. It still serves as a hub of activity, housing the media center, race control, the announcing deck, and several corporate suites. National DRAGSTER has a suite there this year, at the far right of the top floor (far left if you're facing the tower); Linda Vaughn tells me that for years it was the Hurst suite.

One of the other Indy landmarks is the famed crossover bridge, which made its Indy debut in 1967 and for years was sponsored by Hurst. It used to be a lot closer to the starting line but had to be moved for construction of the Parks Tower. Now it's back by the staging lanes but still serves the vital function of allowing fans to go back and forth between the Pro and Sportsman pits without having to dodge racecars.

I made my annual pilgrimage across the old gal – just to say that I did – and could only imagine the millions of footfalls of eager Indy fans who have crossed it in the four decades since, fans running to see their heroes in the pits or headed back to the grandstands to watch the action.

It was a fun tour, and a great touchstone to the event's past. You could almost smell the decades of burned nitro permeating the wooden sides.