Perryville (Marsh) Airstrip

The Southwest Timing Association was running monthly drag races at the Perryville Airstrip, a Luke Air Base auxiliary landing field, by late 1954. News reports always described it as nine miles west of the Goodyear Naval Air Facility. NHRA sanctioned the program in April 1955.

A fluke of weather made Perryville the place where NHRA crowned its first national champion. The first NHRA national championship races, held in Great Bend, Kansas, in 1955, lost their final day to rain. Perryville already had the Southwest Regional Championship scheduled two months later, so NHRA had the qualified racers finish there on November 19-20, 1955. Calvin Rice of Santa Ana, California, won NHRA’s first national title in his flathead Mercury dragster. NHRA officials liked the weather but felt Perryville was too far from Phoenix for future national meets and preferred a more central location. Six thousand people watched the final day, and Ed Losinski ran the meet’s top speed, 151.77 mph, an Arizona record for single-engine cars, in his Chrysler-powered dragster.

At a two-day Arizona state championship on November 3-4, 1956, Red Greth and Lyle Fisher drove the Lords Club dragster to a track record of 142 mph, and Carl Grimes set a national record of 120.83 mph in his A/Altered coupe. He raised it to 122.45 at Perryville on December 2, 1956. Emory Cook set a track record of 163.63 mph on April 14, 1957, and Bud Sampson set a national record for single-engine A gas dragsters at 150.86 mph in a Phoenix car that Lefty Mudersbach worked on. On December 29, 1957, the Lords Club’s Modified entry won top eliminator with the day’s top speed of 152 mph. Jack Moss had the fastest gas speed at 144 mph, but the Dillon-Mudersbach A/OG Olds took top gas eliminator at 143.50, and the Masters Dragliner from Oceanside, California, won C/OG with a record 128.87 mph.

Then the commander of Luke Air Force Base canceled the March 30, 1958 event and barred any further drag racing at Perryville. He said the association hadn’t kept the 1954 agreement to clean up and repair damage after races. The association thought it had done that well, but the order was final, and racing stopped. The order must have been lifted a few years later, since there was racing at Perryville again in 1961.