Red River Drag Strip/Wichita Raceway Park

History

Red River Drag Strip was four miles north of Wichita Falls on the Iowa Park Highway, on Farm to Market Road 369. Some sources date its opening to 1952, but no newspaper record confirms it. On November 24, 1957, Bobby Langley won the A Dragster class at 140.06 MPH. On January 26, 1958, 3,000 spectators watched Eddie and Buddy Reasor take top eliminator at 124.13 MPH and 11.69 seconds in their Chrysler-powered 1924 Ford A/Roadster, from almost 100 entries. Don Garlits won top eliminator at a three-day event on June 8, 1958, setting Texas and Red River speed and ET records in his Tampa Speed Special fueler. In 1959 the Red River Timing Association raced on the second Sunday, and the strip was NHRA sanctioned by 1960 if not earlier.

It went by Pleasant Valley Drag Strip in 1962-63. New management in 1964 renamed it Silver Dollar Dragway, with racers Jerry Mitchell and Keith Davis, ranching partners from Kamay, running it on a lease. It was then a 3,700-foot asphalt strip next to the Red River Speedrome, with outlaw drags from 10 PM on Friday and Saturday nights and a regular program Sunday afternoons. On June 28, 1964, Bill Brittian of Fort Worth won Super Stock with a 12.32. In 1965 Pete Hall and Frank Moon took over and called it Wichita Falls Dragway, a name it kept, under NHRA sanction, through at least 1971. It has also been called Wichita Falls Dragstrip and Wichita Drag Strip, and as of 2015 it was Wichita Raceway Park, an NHRA-sanctioned eighth-mile concrete strip.