Pyote Dragway
ClosedClosed No longer racing, but some of the track is still there.
- Ran on old B-29 runways
- J. D. Zink hit 241.6 MPH in the "Untouchable" jet dragster in 1966
- Raced
- 1966-67
- State
- Texas
- What's left
- A good length of the old track surface is still there, in poor to good condition.
- Raced on
- A military airfield
- First race
- March 20, 1966
- Surface
- Runway
- Location
- West side of the old Pyote Air Base, half a mile west of Pyote
- People
- Wayne Long, owner and developer (1966)
- Sanction
- AHRA
- Elevation
- 2,606 ft (794 m)
- Coordinates
- 31.51560, -103.14346
Wayne Long owned and developed this strip on land leased from the University of Texas, using some of the old B-29 runways on the west side of the former Pyote Air Base, half a mile west of Pyote. He built a timing tower and concession stand before the opening race on Sunday, March 20, 1966, which featured a match race between local driver Tommy McNeely and Tom McCran of Arlington. The track was AHRA sanctioned and raced every third Sunday. On August 21, 1966, J. D. Zink made three exhibition runs in Romeo Palamides’s “Untouchable” jet dragster, with a best of 241.6 MPH. One racer remembered a jet run there that sprayed rocks all over the front of his Falcon while he sat 200 feet back in the staging lanes, and potholes in the return road big enough to lose an 18-wheeler in. Nothing has been found about the strip after 1967.
Background
Pyote was a World War II Army Air Forces training base on 2,745 acres about a mile from town, nicknamed the "Rattlesnake Bomber Base" for the snake dens crews turned up while building it. After the war thousands of reserve aircraft were parked there, the B-29 Enola Gay among them. Nearly every building is gone, but the concrete paving for the runways and ramp survives.
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