Portland International Raceway

History

The drag strip, part of a road course, sits where Vanport stood, a wartime housing city for shipyard workers that was once Oregon’s second-largest city, with more than 40,000 people. In spring 1948 the Columbia River crested, broke the dike and wiped out Vanport. For years only streets and some foundations remained. Portland bought the land from the Army Corps of Engineers in 1960, and in 1961 the Portland Jaycees saw the empty roads as a place for sports car racing and got the Rose Festival Association to sponsor the first Rose Cup Race that June, which has been part of the festival ever since. From at least 1967 to at least 1985, the festival also had the Rose Festival Drag Races.

It was called the Vanport Circuit, West Delta Park or Delta Park Raceway before becoming Portland International Raceway in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Drag racing on the course’s straightaway began in 1965. The March 1969 Hot Rod listed it as NHRA sanctioned, with Al Beachell as manager. The layout has changed several times. In the mid-1980s noise rules limited drag racing to cars with capped headers, which effectively ended the big events. In 2008 and 2009 PIR got permission for one event a year without the noise limits. Today the NHRA-sanctioned track runs drag races several days a week.