Kil-Kare Dragway/Darana Raceway (Xenia)

History

This strip, three miles west of Xenia on old Route 35, opened in 1959 as part of a raceway complex with an oval next door. The exact opening date isn’t known, but the strip record of 145.161 mph was set late that year. The Dayton Road Knights Custom Club ran the races, and in 1960 the schedule was every Sunday plus Wednesday nights in summer. On four straight Sundays in 1963, racing stopped for fifteen minutes while a Methodist minister led a short religious program, which made newspapers across the country.

On June 19, 1965, J. D. Zink made exhibition runs in Romeo Palamides’ jet dragster, with a best of 209 mph, in front of 5,000 people and more than 200 racers. Dick Padar of Heath was the big winner that year in his AA dragster, with more than half a dozen wins, and ran 8.68 seconds at 169.81 mph on July 10. Tommy Ivo beat Roger Harris, driving Art Malone’s dragster, in a match race on May 14, 1966, and was back on July 22 the next year. Big-name bookings like these kept crowds coming. The track went with NHRA sanction in 1971 and stayed with it until switching to IHRA, announced November 8, 2023. The IHRA bought the track in May 2025 and renamed it Darana Raceway that September.