Las Vegas Drag Strip

Drag News ads put this strip half a mile west of the El Rancho Vegas Hotel, which stood in Winchester at the southwest corner of today’s Sahara Avenue and Las Vegas Boulevard. A March 30, 2011 Las Vegas Review-Journal article on Southern Nevada drag strips said it ran in the late 1950s, reportedly on the main runway of Sky Corral Airport, just northwest of today’s McCarran International Airport. That puts it just north of where Interstate 15 meets Desert Inn Road. The runway ran northeast to southwest, and I-15 was built straight through the middle of it. Sky Corral was a general aviation field built around 1946-49 and closed to planes around 1949-52, after six years or less. It belonged to the owners of the Last Frontier Hotel, which went out of business in the mid-1950s, and by then McCarran Field was the city’s main airport. Racers used the abandoned runway until the land was redeveloped.

In 1958 the strip held Silver Dollar Drags, paying fifty silver dollars each to the top gas eliminator, top fuel eliminator and top time winners. A windstorm hit the March 16 meet. John Bradley had top time at 135.71 MPH but lost top fuel eliminator to the Burgess-Wignell-Sugden fuel dragster from Salt Lake, and Del Thorkelson won top gas and overall top eliminator.

The Review-Journal article also listed other 1950s strips around Las Vegas: one at Vegas Valley Drive and Decatur Boulevard in 1953-54, one on Vegas Drive in 1954-56 where the Las Vegas Municipal Golf Course is now, and one in 1957 on Highland Drive near San Francisco Avenue, today’s Sahara Avenue.