Pocatello Drag Strip/Drag City Raceway

Drag races are known to have run on June 20, August 22, September 12 and October 10, 1954. The nonprofit Southeast Idaho Racing Association, formed in October 1953, had asked to use the old Pocatello Municipal Airport (McDougall Field), four miles west of town, and that’s where racing happened in 1954 and after. The strip was 175 feet wide and a mile long, and Hot Rod ran photos of it in April 1954 (p. 51) and December 1954 (pp. 36-37). Planes used the field even before the airport was built in 1928, the runway was paved sometime between 1937 and 1941, and the Army and Navy flew from it during the war.

An electronic timer arrived in 1955, with races on alternate Sundays. The club claimed to be the only strip NHRA had sanctioned for a regional championship two years running, in 1954 and 1955. About ten races in 1957 drew 6,850 people, and in 1958 races ran twice a month. The association had about 30 members that year and met at its clubhouse north of town near the Kraft plant. As of late September 1958, Duane Wignal of Salt Lake City held the strip record at 135.32 mph.

After five years some were unhappy with the strip, which had unfilled chuckholes at one end and was, many felt, too far from town. In August 1959 the association asked Bannock County commissioners to move it to a mile-long, 1,100-foot-wide piece of unused land in front of the county fairgrounds. The commissioners approved, but further study found the plot wasn’t big enough, so racing stayed at the airport. In 1961 the Pocatello Valley Timing Association went door to door to raise $2,000 to repave the strip, with $1,000 from Pocatello and $400 from the city of Alameda. NHRA sanctioned the strip that year.

In 1967 construction of I-15 cut about 1,000 feet off one end, so the timing association added 1,000 feet at the other and moved the timing tower, starting line and power outlets. Jim Sterling, who had owned the track for several years, sold it to Mr. and Mrs. Rodney Nelson in 1969. In 1970 Intermountain Raceway, a partnership of Tim Whiteus, Gary Ratliff and Jim Parsons, got a 2 1/2-year lease for $150 a year. The city council closed the strip in spring 1973 after a youngster was killed in an after-hours crash and the city was sued. Once the legal issues were settled it reopened a few months later, with Jim Hennessy promoting. Wheelstanding showman Ed “The Outlaw” Jones was the last to run it. The lease wasn’t renewed because of leaching from the Simplot plant next to the track.