Colorado Springs Drag Strip

In January 1960 the Pikes Peak Exchange Club got a $70,000 building permit for an asphalt drag strip 4,000 feet long and 250 feet wide. The site ran northeast to southwest between the old Colorado and Southern Railway and Sand Creek, about a mile northeast of the junction of Farmer’s Highway and U.S. Highway 24, a mile east of the Peterson Field entrance. The plans shrank, and the paved strip ended up 60 feet wide and three-quarters of a mile long. The Toreadores Hot Rod Club ran a race on the site before paving, on July 17, 1960, and a formal groundbreaking was held October 1, 1960, with construction expected to take about a month. NHRA sanctioned the track in 1961, the Pikes Peak Timing Association ran races a couple of times a month, and the track record was just over 124 mph by mid-1961.

One old-timer heard that the strip was built in a flood plain and one year a flood buried it in sand, which along with money problems closed it. Around 1963 another flood washed the sand off. In 1964 and 1965, he said, someone would open the gate on Sundays and someone else would turn up with a flag, and it was run what you brung, with a sheriff’s car sometimes watching from the highway. Another old-timer said the track wasn’t sanctioned, just a group of guys who wanted to race, helped by a business group in town, who couldn’t keep up the land payments. He remembered it closing in April 1965, but no record confirms that.