Salina Dragway

The Pagoda Car Club and the Breakfast Optimist Club formed Salina Raceways, Inc. in 1968, with Tom Markley as president. A few races ran that year, and 1969 brought real improvements, including new fencing around the strip and pits and new timing equipment. Tom Knight was the starter, and the 1969 season opened under AHRA sanction. The races ran on the single concrete runway of the old Salina Municipal Airport, 150 feet wide and 4,800 feet long, running north-south alongside today’s Markley Road on the east edge of Salina. For Sunday, August 17, 1969, the Salina Journal reported the dragway’s largest meet yet. Announcer Don Katz expected at least 25 cars in the hot rod and street rod classes alone, a $350 purse was drawing interest from Kansas and nearby states, at least two AHRA national record holders were expected, and Markley called it the first really large meet they’d held. Another regular Sunday race followed two weeks later. On Sunday, September 21, 1969, Al Vander Woude’s “Flying Dutchman” Dodge Charger funny car met Don Biggers’s “Mr. Plymouth” from Kansas City in a match race, with a Bunny from the Kansas City Playboy Club as starter. Racing continued at the old airport through at least the 1977 season. More recently, the Kustom Kemps of America have held run-what-ya-brung drag races there at their annual Leadsled Spectacular.