I-55 Dragway (Pevely)

John Shain, who worked for owner Elmer Sago, dated the opening of this eighth-mile strip to late summer 1970. It was built on a horse ranch named for Sago’s daughter, Lisa K. Sago, and newspapers called it the L-K Ranch racing track. In December 1972 a small plane crashed after its pilot mistook the strip for the Festus airport and clipped a wire tied to the timing equipment.

Flooding was a constant problem and finally closed the track. An old-timer said a flood in the early 1970s badly damaged the strip, tower and outbuildings while an elderly woman was leasing it to an operator. He was paid for the damage, fixed what was needed to keep racing, and used the rest to start building a dirt track that people could watch going up from the interstate. When the federally backed flood insurers learned the money hadn’t all gone to repairs, they wanted it back or the property fixed. He chose to fix it, and the dirt track sat unfinished until he could afford to complete it. The adjacent dirt oval opened in 1975.

Elmer and Mary Sago became the owners in 1979 and planned to rename it Competition World, which never caught on. Jeff Burk, the weekly announcer for a while in the 1980s when the late Troy Smotherman owned it, recalled in 2004 that it was a short eighth mile with plenty of traction. If a car couldn’t stop it crossed the main road into the oval, so anyone driving in past the sand trap had to watch for race cars. He said it was being used as parking for the dirt track and the occasional swap meet. The strip closed after floods in 1991 and 1993, poor attendance, the oval’s success and competition from bigger strips in the area.