Cornhusker Raceway Park

Cornhusker Raceway Park sat five miles south of Omaha, a mile north of Interstate 80 on Highway 50, at the northeast corner of South 145th Street and West Giles Road, two miles southwest of Millard. John P. Kelly of Papillion filed incorporation papers in November 1968, and news reports put the cost at $300,000. It had an 800-foot fire-up lane, so cars didn’t need push starts, and an eight-sided timing tower. The first race may have been July 26-27, 1969. Co-owner Don Kroeger, who had pioneered drag racing at Flightland Airfield in the 1960s, managed it that year.

John Wiebe was top fuel qualifier with a 6.83 at a two-day NHRA regional on September 7-8, 1969. The track had seventeen race dates in 1971, hosted an NHRA divisional meet on September 18-19 and was named NHRA Division 5 drag strip of the year. In late June 1972 it dropped its Sunday program after drivers refused to race for that season’s purses and demanded four times as much. James Patton managed the track in 1972. An NHRA divisional points meet on May 26-27, 1973 was to include a match race between Sox & Martin and Bill “Grumpy” Jenkins, but rain pushed it to July 7-8. That may have been the last race, though nothing has been found about it.

The track started with a lot of promise but faded over dissension and lack of profit. On Friday, September 14, 1973, everything was auctioned off, from bleachers, tractors and mowers to fencing, coffee urns and gas ranges. One old racer remembered it as a great strip in a natural valley that made the cars echo, drawing local racers like Kidder Automotive, Holcomb/Howdy Williams, Bill Woods, Speedway Motors and Raceland Speedshop, and big rails from Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Kansas and Colorado. He said the city grew around it. Another man, whose father raced there, said it was just north of the interstate, one valley over from the Millard airport, with a concrete company and other businesses there now. He’d been told the racers demanded bigger payouts and threatened a boycott, and the owner closed the track and turned it into an industrial park.