History of Drag Racing in Nebraska

Nebraska has a rich heritage of Drag Racing dating back to the 1950’s. Car clubs throughout eastern Nebraska have staged events at area military airfields and airports throughout eastern and central Nebraska. Some of the earliest drag racing in Nebraska occurred in the early 1950’s at the Scribner Army Airfield Base when area car clubs convinced Curtis LeMay with the military to allow them to run their cars on the runways.

Racing was also held from the late 1950’s to around 1968 at Flightland, which was north of Omaha. Cornhusker Raceway just outside of Omaha in the Millard area held drag racing events from 1968 to 1973. Sioux City had racing events from the late 1950’s to early 1960’s. Grand Island held races in the late 1950’s and then closed in the early 1960’s as well with some of their equipment moved to Kearney where Kearney Raceway Park is still in operation today. Lincoln also hosted drag racing events at the air base from the late 1950’s to the mid 1960’s. The Rebel’s car club in Lincoln helped organize and run the Lincoln Air Base racing events during that time and is still an active club today that host local and national car shows including the popular Americruise event.

Missouri Valley Timing Association

The Missouri Valley Timing Association (MVTA) was instrumental in organizing drag racing events throughout the eastern Nebraska area. The MVTA was originally founded in 1948 as a profit corporation by a group of area hot-rodders returning from World War II. Its name was derived from the Missouri Valley River Basin area sandwiched between Iowa and Nebraska.

It was originally designed as an organization to work with and coordinate the car clubs in the area with the local police departments. In the early years car clubs were geared towards racing. Some clubs even had a “club car” with the whole club working on and putting money into. Clubs were heavily male oriented, not the family organizations as they are today.

MVTA met fairly regularly with each club sending two representatives on their behalf. This continued until the early 1970’s and then interest declined when the only operating drag strip, Cornhusker in Millard, closed in 1973 to future development in the area.

Interest for a drag strip was revitalized in 1978 by three men; Ralph Howard, Gus Gast and Tom Grasso. The three reformed the MVTA name and corporation and Omaha artist Jack Edward, designed the logo. This time, however, the MVTA was formed under nonprofit status for the sole purpose of organizing area racers to get another drag strip operating. Despite the doubters and the many obstacles of obtaining permission from Dodge County, the many hours of volunteer work and sacrifice from the drag race enthusiasts in this area, on April 27, 1980 the dream of having a local track was realized again with the opening of the Scribner Raceway in Scribner.

The MVTA continued to provide support along with improving the Motorplex facility through the year 1999.

Nebraska Motorplex

Drag racing at the Scribner can be traced back to the early 1950’s when local car clubs convinced Curtis E. LeMay, commander of SAC and aviation legend, to run their cars at the Scribner Army Air Field for a few years. The airfield was eventually closed and the government sold the property to four local farmers.

The organizers of Cornhusker knew their time was limited with racing based upon growing development around the track at Millard, and after a few years of successful operation it closed in 1973. Interest for a new track was growing. Sites for building a race facility were looked at all over eastern Nebraska and western Iowa. Finally in 1978, three men, Ralph Howard, Gust Gast and Tom Grasso reformed the MVTA to look at trying find a suitable site to race. A meeting with the farmers who owned the old Scribner Air Field was held with an agreement made to lease the airfield to once again bring organized Drag Racing back to eastern Nebraska. The agreement was made, they have the place to race, but now the real work was ahead of them in creating a facility to hold racing events.

The airfield runways were in very poor shape from neglect and required a lot of preparation to make the surface race ready. A huge amount of volunteer effort from racers in their various professional fields including electricians and construction workers along with their vehicles and support equipment were used to construct the guard rails, route the wiring for the timing equipment and install the power to run the track equipment. Power was brought in to the facility and a well installed to supply water to the track. A timing tower was built along with other facility buildings. Many people to numerous to name donated many hours of their time to make the facility a reality.

All of their efforts were finally realized when Scribner Raceway was opened on April 27th 1980. Response was tremendous with hundreds of racers and spectators attending. The MVTA continued to make improvements with moving the old Cornhusker timing tower from Millard to Scribner and building more grandstands. They continued to lease the ground and operate the track until the mid 1980’s when Omaha homebuilder and racer Corky East purchased the facility and renamed it the Nebraska Motorplex.

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East, since owning a home construction business, used his construction expertise in updating the facility including restrooms with showers, larger grandstands, adding another story to the timing tower, installing lights, and building concession stands. All his efforts to improve the facility and switching sanctioning bodies to IHRA allowed the Motorplex to hold IHRA National events from 1992 to 1994. Don Garlits and Doug Herbert headlined these events along with national TV coverage from ESPN. Doug Herbert ran Nebraska’s first four second run in 1992 with a Top Fuel Dragster clicking off an elapsed time of 4.98 at 289 miles per hour. These National events filled the Motorplex to capacity, making it the largest spectator motorsports event in Nebraska. Top Fuel cars, Jet Cars and IHRA sportsman racers from all over the country raced at these two National Events.

The Motorplex then switched back to the NHRA in the late 1990’s and in late 1999, it was announced that track was for sale and would either be sold or not open for the year 2000. No buyers come forward to purchase the facility and it appeared like there would be no racing for t
he 2000 season.

Thankfully, Lincoln Nebraska resident Greg Sanford recognized the opportunity to continue drag racing in eastern Nebraska and purchased the Motorplex. He had been actively trying to build a motorsports facility in the Lincoln area and had looked at several sites in and around the city in the late 1990’s. He fortunately decided to step in and buy the Motorplex to continue to give the racers and motorsports enthusiasts a place to race while continuing his efforts in finding a place to build a facility in Lincoln. A deal was made to purchase the Motorplex in April 2000 just in time to open the facility for the race season. Greg continued to improve the facility with updated lighting, better grandstands, improved PA system with FM radio announcing, extending the concrete from the starting line and finally grinding and leveling of the track which dramatically improved the race surface making it one of the fastest tracks in the Midwest. The NHRA Division 5 race with it’s Night of Fire program continued to pack the grandstands during the race season with Jet Cars, Alcohol Funny Cars and Sportsman racers from around the country.

At the divisional race in August 2005, it was announced that the Motorplex was once again going up for sale and would not be open for the 2006 season. Many racers and race fans hoped someone would purchase the facility, but no one came forward and the final race was held in November 2005.

Racers and race fans appreciated the extended time that they had a facility to race at knowing that the Motorplex would have closed in 1999. We would all like to thank the Sanford family for their many sacrifices to keep the track open the last 6 years and the many improvements to the Motorplex since they owned it, and wish him continued success at building a facility in the Lincoln area.

Greg is continuing his plans on building the fastest and most fan friendly facility in the Midwest. He has purchased 160 acres of land that is one mile long by ¼ mile wide at Hwy 77 and Branched Oak Roads. The site is 5 miles north of I-80 and Hwy 77 interchange and will allow easy accessibility and provide many opportunities of economic growth in and around the area. An application to build a drag racing facility at this location has been applied for and is before the Lancaster County Board of Commissioners. The application is pending approval by the County Board in March or April based on the recommendations of a County created Motorsports Task Force.

Nebraska and the Midwest is a car enthusiasts region as demonstrated by the hundreds of car shows, hundreds of car clubs, and thousands of enthusiasts and race fans. Hopefully, racers and car enthusiasts can look forward to the next chapter of drag racing and motorsports in Nebraska with bringing this venue back to Lincoln.