Shelton Airport

The Tacoma Timing Association reportedly started drag racing at the Shelton Airport in 1951. In 1954 the Shelton Civil Air Patrol, which ran the airport, leased it to the association for races every second Sunday in summer, and the association and the Western Washington Timing Association held a two-day championship there on July 4-5, 1954. On May 20, 1956, a Tacoma teenager was badly beaten by three others at an all-night party at the airport before a race, the first trouble at the races. The association moved quickly to ban underage drinking and the all-night parties, but the county prosecutor canceled Sunday races indefinitely. After meeting with the association he agreed to allow racing if it hired a deputy sheriff to patrol, and the association promised to throw out anyone with beer or liquor in their car. On August 31, 1958, Dick Martin lost his right leg above the knee when the Dyna-Flo transmission in his 1936 modified coupe blew apart.

One racer made his first pass at Shelton in 1958 in his parents’ new ‘57 Chevy hardtop, with a power pack 283 and a Powerglide, after pulling the hubcaps and air cleaner. His parents didn’t know. When the Powerglide failed, his father said they didn’t make them like they used to. Years later, as his father lay dying after a heart attack, he finally told him he’d raced the car, hoping it might bring him around. It didn’t.

New grandstands for 2,400 went up for 1967, when races ran every other Sunday starting April 9, with Hollie Swindle’s “Back Up Pickup” wheelstander featured. Shelton hosted an NHRA divisional points meet on May 7, 1967, and a 1968 issue of the Swedish magazine Start & Strip called it Shelton Drag Strip. Racing came back on a limited basis in 2006 and 2007.