Wyoming is apparently going to lose its only sanctioned quarter mile drag strip. In an amazingly graceful and well written announcement made on Facebook yesterday, the operators of Douglas Motorsports Park in Douglas Wyoming said the following:
After 30+ years Douglas Motorsports Park has had decades of great drag racing, good friends and family fun! We have been truly honored to run this track for a year and unfortunately have to announce that the track is officially closed. After talking to city council they will begin construction at the east end of the track in the spring and have informed us that they believe racing and construction can not safely co-exist. They are going to sell and develop the entire property in which the track is set. We would like to thank everyone for all the support, thank you to all the racers, thank you to everyone that has spent one moment helping out to make this track last as long as it has. We have built amazing friendships with the racing family we have come to love and hope everyone continues to race and be successful. Until we meet again on rubber covered starting lines, a true Christmas tree, and in the fog of an amazing burn out, God bless the road, it’s racers and keep all of us safe a 1/4 mile at a time!
This was the type of place that was not about flash, dash, and luxury boxes. This was the type of community drag strip that saw the racers come out before opening day in the spring to clean the place up. It saw the racers coming early and staying late to scrape the starting line and track, and it saw racers competing there with their own kids after growing up at the facility.
While it may be shocking to think that Wyoming only had one active, sanctioned quarter mile drag racing facility because of its land area, the population is really what dictates stuff like this. The track closing was not about the attendance as much as it was about the municipality owning the land that the track was on and bringing it back into the fold.
Tough break for those racers and we hope there is another feasible option!
Here’s some video of a car running 7.40s at the track –
I live no where close to Wyoming, but I think that this sucks. I understand that with the municipality owning the land, they have the right to do with it what they want. However, it seems to me that another location could have been found for their construction. I have driven across the state and it seems they have a lot of empty land. I wish the racers well in finding a new place to race. I also wonder if the sanctioning body did anything to try to save the track.
Why do we need a drag strip when we could build another Walmart? After all old men dressed in bunny suits and fat women in spandex also need a place to “vogue”. Drag racing can go back can go back to the streets where safety and the rules were written by Darwin years ago. A town named for the fat kid down the street can’t be all bad. 🙂
It would be one thing if there was future plans for a new place, but this does suck. Far to many tracks are being closed instead of opened or even re-vamped.
Progress sure sucks !!
There\’s so much empty area in that God awful state that there\’s no reason not to find another long, empty strip of desolate land to put another strip far from civilization.
First. those of us who live in “that God awful state” live here as a matter of preference and because we don’t have to be neighbors to people like you. Secondly, your profound ignorance about the costs associated with building a replacement track illustrate why you could not carry on an intelligent conversation about the matter.
Reminiscin Racing considered Douglas Wyoming our Home Track for more than a decade. Learned how to shoe a blown front engine dragster there, and had so many good times that that whole team should still be in the city jail.
Thanks for so many great memories!!!
(dig on this cool video that was put together at DMP!!)
https://youtu.be/_S7MKCxK_g4
Johnnie
Reminiscin Racing
Denver, Colorado
Really sad to see ‘Little D’ go. Tons of great memories racing there. That track was awfully good to our team!
Tiff
Reminiscin Racing
Its a sad day fellas, I live in Douglas Wyoming and have had the privilege of only getting a season and a half of racing done here. I just finished my little 66 Nova and now we have no where to go except for Denver or Billings MT. working folks like my self can’t stay competitive having to travel that far so the car has to get sold. its to bad heritage and tradition are lost for some dollars that don’t exist!
you know what, I’m not done..
it can be summed up into one word. “Expansion” it makes me sick that something with so much history is just thrown aside like it never existed! not to rant but shit like this is whats wrong with our country.. When something so valuable to a community can be destroyed so easily people should be alarmed. Its not just the track and the racing.. its the families and friends and little kids that get to come to the races. Its the time people get to bond with their children. A place where fathers and brothers and sons and daughters are closer than ever. it a place where a little girl gets to ride to the starting line in a race car for the first time and memories that can never be forgotten. folks making decisions that don’t affect them will never understandits not the loss of the track, its the loss of society. People will laugh at what I’m saying, however the ones laughing are the ones that are blind