Scottsbluff Drag Strip

The racing here took place at the Scottsbluff Municipal Airport, east of town. On May 25, 1958, Al Monk of Cheyenne won top fuel eliminator at 115.44 MPH in a rear-engine Ardun-Merc dragster, and Darrell Zimmerman of Sterling, Colorado, took top gas eliminator at 110.58 MPH in his Merc flathead B/D. The Nile Valley Timing Association ran races in 1959 on April 19, May 30-31 and August 9, and there were races in May, July and September of 1960. At the May 30, 1960 race, a piece of an exploding clutch hit a spectator in the head, and he sued NHRA for $500,000. In April 1961 Walter B. Willard and Larry R. Taylor of Scottsbluff filed incorporation papers for the Scottsbluff Timing Association to run drag races, and NHRA-sanctioned races followed on September 3 and September 23-24 that year. The track record stood at 181 MPH in 1966. The strip was on a 1968 list of 325 U.S. drag strips in the Swedish magazine Start & Strip, and Hot Rod listed Scottsbluff Dragway as NHRA sanctioned in April 1968, with Ron Weinmeister as track manager. The full span of years that racing ran in Scottsbluff hasn’t been pinned down.