Inyokern Drag Strip

In early 1954 the China Lake Dust Devils Auto Club raised money for a drag strip at Inyokern Airport (Harvey Field). Club president Bernie Partridge had worked for two years to get a strip at the county airport, and the Dust Devils held their first race on October 24, 1954, with 50-cent admission and trophies for 31 class winners. They set a schedule of races on the third Sunday of each month and got insurance through NHRA. NHRA noticed Partridge’s talents, made him chief announcer in its early years, and he was a leader in the organization for thirty years. Bud Coons, who led NHRA’s touring “Drag Safari,” told the Amarillo Daily News in 1955 that there were about 150 city-sponsored, police-supervised strips in the U.S. in 1953 and 250 in 1954, the year Inyokern opened. Newspapers of the time don’t back that up. NHRA sanctioned car clubs as well as strips in those years, so his numbers may include both. Twelve national records fell at an NHRA regional meet at Inyokern in May 1960. When the strip closed in 2005 because of new Federal Aviation Administration rules, it was reportedly the second-oldest continuously and regularly operating strip in the country.