St. Genevieve Drag Strip (Zell)

This two-lane eighth-mile concrete strip, with grass between the lanes, was in Zell, a hamlet six miles west of Ste. Genevieve. According to Lyndel Revelle, Les Trautman built it, and it opened around 1966. Herb McCandless ran his ‘68 Hemi Cuda there in 1968, and Bill Hielscher raced one of his ‘Mr. Bardahl’ cars there several times. Eddie Banes remembered a 1969 match race between Guthrie & Burton’s ‘Hemi Hoss’ and Steve Manhart as the fastest cars he had ever seen. Duffy Denemark bought and ran the track in 1973.

Jeff Burk visited in 2004. He said St. Louis racers like Bill Kuhlmann and Jerry Hass ran there in the ’60s and tell of golf balls from the neighboring fairways landing on the track during races. It was the fastest track in the area, and he noted it runs clearly uphill from the halfway point back toward the starting line. Pacing it off, he found it just over 23 feet wide with about a foot of drop-off, and the old tower still stood. A few patches of pavement remain just off Highway 32, near the golf course south of Zell.