Flightland/Omaha Dragway (Irvington)

Drag races were held on a mile-long grass airport runway in or near Omaha by 1955, maybe earlier. Racers remember it as an old airstrip called Flightland before it became Omaha Dragway. One who raced there in the mid to late ’60s, when it was closed to racing, said it was still an airfield. Little is known about 1960-61 beyond the Kingsmen Club of Columbus helping run the races and trophies going to class winners. Races ran two or three times a month from April through October. One was held on Sunday, August 27, 1961. Racers tied the strip to Irvington, but ads and articles placed it ten miles northwest of Irvington on Highway 133. The old Flightland field is today’s Blair Municipal Airport, activated in 1961, about 5-6 miles north of Irvington. With mostly open country around it back then, linking it to Irvington makes sense.

The airport, and the racing on it, owed a lot to Gene Kidder, an NHRA Division 5 adviser in the 1950s. He was working at Omaha National Bank and, as a 2006 Bowling Green Daily News article put it, helped get racers off the streets and onto the old Flightland airstrip. Kidder said NHRA made him an adviser because he was organizing clubs to keep young people from racing on the streets. He also wanted a drag strip in Omaha. According to the article, when he learned that a man who wanted to build an airstrip needed a bank loan, Kidder used his bank connections to talk him into letting people pay to race there, which gave racers a place to run and helped pay off the loan. The man agreed, later sponsored Kidder’s racing, and Kidder managed the strip, which became Omaha Dragway and drew some of the sport’s biggest names, including Tom Hoover and Chris Karamesines.

At a big NHRA meet on July 29, 1962, more than 3,000 people saw Jim Nelson win his class in his Dragmaster AA dragster at 9.35 and 170.09 MPH. Tommy Ivo made exhibition runs in his four-engine dragster on September 30, 1962. Several races were televised in 1964. Don Kroeger managed the track from about 1965 to 1968. At the last race of 1967, on September 24, Kidder met Dick Landy in a best-of-five match race. Kroeger resigned early in 1968 and Jim Davis replaced him. Before an NHRA regional on July 27-28, 1968, the track record stood at 210 MPH, and John Wiebe was expected to threaten it. One of the last races, possibly the final one, was a junior fueler and street eliminator championship on July 20, 1969.