Walla Walla Drag Strip

History

Before 1970, drag races were held fairly informally on an unused taxiway at the western edge of Walla Walla Airport. In 1970 a corporation headed by Jerry McBee spent $30,000 improving the taxiway for more professional events, and news reports called it the newly improved Middle Waitsburg Road drag strip. The airport board approved Bonanza because its plans included proper controls, after turning down earlier requests because of one bad experience. What that was isn’t known, though it may date to racing at the airport in the 1950s. The NHRA-sanctioned quarter-mile strip opened with grudge races on Sunday, June 14, 1970. The first class meet, on June 21, drew 1,300 spectators and 75 entries, and Bob Verstag ran fastest at 136 MPH in his B dragster. The grand opening was June 28, 1970, and by August the track record was 7.19 seconds at 205 MPH. Racing stopped after 1973 when the operators couldn’t get a bank loan to continue.

In 1999 Stuart Rowe organized a couple of races on the old strip and Bonanza Raceway came back. The first drew 65 cars and 650 spectators, and the second 120 cars and 1,200 fans, racing an eighth mile with a flag start and flag boys at the finish. With that kind of interest, timing equipment went in for a full 2000 season, along with bleachers for 1,500, and racing ran once a month from April through October. In July 2000 officials required NHRA sanction for racing to continue. The track nearly closed after 2008, and in 2009 five local businessmen, Steve Kelty, Doug Luttrell, Doug Watts, Larry Thomason and Lee Champ, bought it and renamed it Walla Walla Drag Strip. It still runs as an NHRA-sanctioned eighth-mile track.