Pacific Drag Strip/Raceway Park

This eighth-mile strip about four miles south of Pacific, on the southern edge of Catawissa, had races by early August 1963, and Tony Nancy met Ron Pellegrini in a match race on September 22. Dr. Gene Engleman of St. Louis was the principal owner. In late 1963 liens were filed against Pacific Raceway, Inc. for more than $32,000 in unpaid construction bills, and in 1964 another lien followed for about $25,000 owed for paving. Races ran Saturday nights, the track hosted the AHRA Eighth Mile Super Stock Nationals, and Dick Harrell was among the well-known racers there. Wayne Meinert ran it in its later years.

On September 26, 1963, Eric Frey was killed by a dynamite blast while filling an old well on the property. Frey was a business partner in the strip with Glennon Engleman, a South St. Louis dentist. Authorities suspected Engleman in Frey’s death but couldn’t prove it. In the mid-1980s he was convicted of two murders, pleaded guilty to three more, and got two life sentences. The strip is now a road in the Evergreen Estates subdivision.