Bethany Dragway/Thunder Valley Raceway

Dale Ruff, Jim McDaniel and Carl Van Meter, all of Bethany, formed the Midway Timing Corporation to build and run the strip, and Jimmie McDaniel filed incorporation papers for Midway Timing, Inc. on April 29, 1963. The eighth-mile track, 2.5 miles east of Bethany on U.S. 136, opened May 14, 1966, with a 125-acre farm for parking. Spectators watched from a hillside, sitting in their cars, and fluorescent lights allowed night racing. It wasn’t AHRA-sanctioned at first but followed AHRA rules, with trophies in forty classes. The strip was 40 feet wide and 2,000 feet long, with only 1,320 feet paved, and railroad ties sunk in the ground and linked with steel cable lined it at a 100-foot width. Races were set for Saturday nights from May through September. On July 30, 1966, 84 entries came from Kansas, Iowa and Missouri. Racing went on through at least 1968. The next record found is from 1980, when it was called Thunder Valley Raceway, the name it still uses as an eighth-mile track.