Minnesota Dragways (Coon Rapids)

In July 1957 the Minneapolis Optimist Club voted to sell bonds to fund a drag strip five miles northwest of Anoka, estimated at $70,000. In March 1958 it paid $20,000 for 143 acres three miles east of Anoka and formed a corporation, the Minneapolis Optimist Club Timing Association, made up of thirteen Twin Cities Optimist clubs. By June 1958 it had raised about $25,000, then found its estimate was about $100,000 too low. Twin City Speedway owner Don Voge offered to sell them his drag strip for half what they planned to spend. They said no, signed a $40,000 grading contract in October 1958, and finished grading by mid-December. By April 1959 they had 90 percent of the money, though costs had grown to $140,000 (a 1963 article said the bond issue raised $220,000). The asphalt was done by early June 1959.

The nonprofit Twin Cities Optimist Clubs’ Timing Association sponsored the races, and the Gopher State Timing Association ran them, with John Foster as manager for the track’s whole life. The entrance was near today’s Main and Avocet in Coon Rapids. There were bleachers, but most people lined the chain-link fence along the strip. It was NHRA-sanctioned by 1960. Don Garlits met Chris Karamesines in a match race on May 26, 1963, and at the season finale on September 29, 1963, Joe Deggendorf of Dubuque set a strip record of 9.96 and 143 mph in his A gas dragster. In July 1972, 30,000 people came to see Evel Knievel jump three vans and eight cars on a steam-powered Harley-Davidson.

Noise complaints from neighbors finished the strip. In 1970 the city council and track agreed it would close for good in November 1976, with a quieter PA and walls around the staging area until then. Requests for an extension were turned down in 1976 and again in 1977, and in June 1977 Yamaha was refused permission to test snowmobiles there. The site is a quiet residential neighborhood now.