50 Years of NASCAR Racing ~ Post 36
By Matt McLaughlin
Editor’s note: This article is part of a special reprise of Matt McLaughlin’s “50 Years of NASCAR Racing”, written and published in 1998 in commemoration of NASCAR ‘s 50th Anniversary celebration that year. In keeping with the RacersReunion mission of passing the history of our sport down to younger fans, Matt has kindly granted us permission to run the entire series. Please, sit back and enjoy as you take a journey back through the pages of history and perhaps relive a memory or two. Many thanks to Matt for his generosity in sharing. God bless you, my friend.
This week’s history column presents a bit of a problem. Because the upcoming Las Vegas race is the inaugural Winston Cup event at the facility, obviously there’s no great Cup race memories to relate. Rather than dealing with epic races of yore, instead I’ll concentrate on a bit of trivia, the first, and until this weekend only, top rank NASCAR event ever held in Las Vegas. That’s correct. NASCAR ran a Grand National race in Las Vegas way back on October 16, 1955. Recall that Las Vegas was still a relatively new gambling Mecca back in 1955, with the first Las Vegas hotel-casino, the Flamingo, having opened in 1946. It was rather like Atlantic City back then, only with better weather and a higher class of mobsters, like the Flamingo’s builder of record, Bugsy Seigel, who had a rather unfortunate high caliber retirement party at the hands of his rivals the very next year.
The Las Vegas race was held at the Las Vegas Park Speedway, a one mile dirt oval that had started out as a horse racing track. Prior to NASCAR’s visit, the track had already played host to a Indy Car event in 1954. The Grand National race was won by Norman Nelson, who had a two lap lead over Bill Hyde, who in turn was two laps ahead of Bill West. Don’t feel bad if none of these names are familiar to you. To be honest, I had never heard of them either. It was the only race Nelson ever won, but in light of the fact his career included only five races, that’s not too bad a batting average. Hyde’s career included 7 races, and West’s 8. So how did these relative unknowns (known only to their relatives that is) beat out the heroes of the day, the Flock Brothers, Lee Petty, Joe Weatherly, Buck Baker and Herb Thomas? To be honest, they didn’t. Those drivers and most of the other stars of racing from the Southeast were busy that day. NASCAR staged another Grand National race that same day at Martinsville, which is where all the big names were running. In those days Bill France often staged two races on the same day, one on the west coast and one on the east, with both awarding Grand National points towards the championship, as he tried to gain a foothold in the new markets in the west… which is exactly why the Winston Cup series is going back to Las Vegas as well.
The 1955 event in Las Vegas was scheduled to be a 200-mile affair. Unfortunately, there was a horrendous wreck on lap 74 that involved 12 of the 27 entries that day. The red flag had to be thrown to allow the wreckers to clear the mess and that took a while. Nelson, who had taken the lead from Lloyd Dane on the fifth lap, was still on the point when the action resumed and never gave up the lead again. At lap 111 darkness fell, and the race was ended. Norman Nelson won the event, at a blistering pace of 44.5 miles per hour in his Chrysler. 13 cars were still listed as running when the event ended, leaving one to speculate if any car would still have been running had the race gone the full distance. The first place check amounted to $1325, which incidentally is $225 more than Speedy Thompson got for winning at Martinsville that same afternoon.
Thompson and Nelson shared a few interesting things. Both drove the dominating Chrysler 300s, the two door version of the more sedate New Yorker, powered by 331 cubic inch Hemi engines. Both cars were white; not surprising, considering both entries were owned by the same man, Carl Kiekhaefer, who as part of his plan to dominate stock car racing quite often fielded teams at both east and west coast events. Of course, that meant both cars were also sponsored by Kiekhaefer’s company, Mercury Marine Outboards. Exactly why Kiekhaefer decided that a race held out in the middle of the desert would be a good place to advertise boat engines is a bit of trivia lost to history.
NASCAR never returned to the Las Vegas Park Speedway, and the track was soon lost to the urban sprawl of Las Vegas. The Las Vegas Hilton now sits on the site that was once the scene of Norman Nelson’s greatest NASCAR triumph.
AUTHOR’S NOTE: Thanks as always to Greg Fielden, whose excellent “Forty Years of Stock Car Racing ” series provides the only account I have ever found of the less than momentous first NASCAR Las Vegas race.
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Man, I enjoyed another lesson in NASCAR history. Thanks Matt & PKL!
JAck, that one was even new to me, and I thought I pretty much knew it all… but I keep on finding out how much I didn’t know ten years ago, and sometimes, ten minutes ago. All history is fascinating, don’t ya think? I am having ever so much fun with these pieces from Matt. I got to read them when they were new, but I think I appreciate them more now, a decade removed. So happy to know others are enjoying them as well.
Couple of years back, Tom Higgins wrote this column:
Las Vegas: The first time around (in 1955)
TOM HIGGINS’ SCUFFS
By Tom Higgins – ThatsRacin.com Contributor
Tuesday, Mar. 01, 2011
Attention, class! It’s time for a pop quiz on NASCAR history.
When the Las Vegas 400 was scheduled for November of 1998, the event widely was hailed as the first stock car race ever in the Gambling Capitol Of The World.
Was this assertion true or false?
You have 10 seconds to answer, and no fair trying get help from Google.
… Four, Three, Two, One, Zero. Time is up!
And the answer is:
FALSE!
NASCAR founder Big Bill France promoted a 200-mile race at Las Vegas on Oct. 16, 1955, or 43 years earlier. He also sanctioned a 100-miler the same day at Martinsville Speedway across the continent in Virginia. Points from both races counted toward the ’55 driving championship.
The event 56 years ago in Las Vegas, where NASCAR’s Kobalt Tools 400 is scheduled Sunday, was held at a facility named Las Vegas Park Speedway. A dirt track, it measured a mile around.
The Park had been founded just after World War II as a thorough bred racing track called the Las Vegas Jockey Club. It soon failed, so promoters turned to quarter-horse racing. This failed as well.
Soon, open-cockpit cars from the AAA sanctioning organization were scheduled for the track, and produced modest success. This encouraged France to give the stock cars a try.
Twenty-seven cars were entered in the race, including a highly-regarded Chrysler for Norm Nelson from the powerful operation of Carl Kiehaefer.
Nelson, a popular driver from Wisconsin, won the pole. However, Lloyd Dane led the first four laps, then Nelson took command for good.
He was ahead by two laps when a 12-car crash with a lap to go blocked the track, forcing a red flag. With darkness falling, officials declared the race complete.
NASCAR didn’t return to Nevada until the present-day 1.5-mile track opened in 1998.
Nelson never was to score another NASCAR victory, but he won USAC championships in 1960, ’65 and ’66.
Entered in that long ago Las Vegas race with Nelson were Johnny Mantz and Eddie Pagan. Mantz was the winner of the inaugural Soutern 500 at Darlington Raceway in 1950. Pagan was to gain fame as part of the Hutcherson-Pagan operation that for many years built race cars and provided parts for NASCAR’s top teams.
Coincidentally, Kiekhaefer also won as a car-owner that same autumn day in ’55 at Martinsville. Speedy Thompson, driving for the founder of Mercury Outboards for the first time, beat Buck Baker for the checkered flag.
In that era, France often staged top tier races the same day at tracks in different sections of the country.
He did it in 1956 at Charlotte and Portland, Ore., and Langhorne, Pa., and Portland. And in 1957 at Eureka, Calif., and New Oxford, Pa.; Lehi, Ark., and Portland; Watkins Glen and Bremerton, Wash.; and Langhorne and San Jose.
So what ever happened to Las Vegas Park Speedway?
In a sense, they’re still going round-and-round there.
A Hilton Hotel, which has roulette wheels in its casino, now sits on the site.
Read more here: http://www.thatsracin.com/2011/03/01/57861/las-vegas-the-first-time-around.html#storylink=cpy
Dave, I wouldn’t even argue as to which came first there. Matt’s articles for this series were written mostly in 1997. Tom was writing long before that, and well may have been one of the sources for Matt’s work. What you see Tom doing now, he calls “Scuffs.” All writers that have anything worthwhile, find a way to “recycle” and Tom came up with a real winner in doing “scuffs” of racing columns.
History remains, hopefully, the same. There are only different folks writing the same story. May it ever be thus.