Century 21 Raceway (Aurora)

The Century 21 Corporation, headed by Peter Conway, financed, built and ran this short-lived complex with a quarter-mile drag strip and a paved oval with a figure-8 track. It sat ten miles east of Denver, four miles east of Stapleton International Airport, on the north side of I-70 just northwest of the Gun Club Road interchange and northeast of Aurora. The asphalt is gone, but the complex is easy to see in aerial photos. The drag strip was 4,300 feet long, and 10,000 bucket seats on concrete stands south of the strip and oval held spectators. Jim Tibbets managed the track.

The opener was an NHRA regional points race on August 28-29, 1971. Rain stopped eliminations on Sunday in front of 6,000 disappointed fans, and the finish was rescheduled for September 26. Rob Williams had the best top fuel ET at 7.09 and Howard Ditzel the best speed at 206.61 mph. In 1972 Century 21 switched to AHRA and hosted the AHRA Spring Nationals June 2-4. Rain hurt qualifying on Friday and Saturday, though Don Garlits ran a Colorado record 6.77 on his first pass Saturday night to take the top spot, about an hour after Kansas racer John Wiebe ran 6.98. Afternoon storms and lightning damaged the Christmas tree, so starter Steve Langley used a flag. The event drew 14,000 fans, and Jim Nichol won top fuel after Garlits red-lighted in the semifinal.

The Spring Nationals came back in 1973. Garlits won top fuel after protesting that Dan Richins’s Iron Horse top fueler sat so low it slid under the light beam, and officials agreed this gave Richins an unfair edge at the start. Rex Pearmain, who co-owned the Iron Horse with Richins, remembered the race differently from the newspaper reports. Garlits set low ET at 6.331, Gary Beck had top speed at 226.13 mph, Dale Pulde won funny car and Dick Landy pro stock. Crowds were bigger than the year before, but rain delays sent thousands home early. AHRA was unhappy with the money from its Century 21 events and began looking elsewhere, which may have helped make 1973 the track’s last drag racing season. The weather certainly didn’t help.