Roland Leong's Hawaiin AA/FD (far lane) in 1968. Image: Ernie Ohlson

The NHRA is just a week away from it’s annual spring visit to the desert oasis that is The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway for the SummitRacing.com Nationals, now in it’s 12th year of ground-pounding nitro racing in “the city that never sleeps.”

Bruton Smith and his Speedway Motorsports Inc. constructed the state-of-the-art quarter mile facility located adjacent to the 1.5 mile NASCAR oval in 1999 and opened in April of 2000. But it certainly wasn’t the straight line sport’s first foray into America’s entertainment mecca. No sir, three different racing facilities held straight-line racing prior to the opening of LVMS, dating back to 1958. And the distinction of perhaps the most known of those early dragstrips goes to – get this a casino.

In the early 1960’s, The Stardust Hotel & Casino, one of the most recognizable names to ever grace the Las Vegas Strip, in conjunction with a group from the Riviera Hotel, formulated the ingenious idea to construct a racing facility to attract high rollers to their hotels. Thus, on October 21, 1965, what was known as the Stardust International Raceway opened its gates, officially delivering professional auto racing to the city never short on entertainment. The facility featured a flat, 3-mile, 13-turn road course and a quarter-mile drag strip. The Stardust spared no expensive in what was considered at the time to be among the elite “supertracks.”

The track was located in what is now Spring Valley Township in an area from Tropicana Avenue to Flamingo Road and bordered by Rainbow Blvd and Piedmont Blvd.

"Dyno Don" Nicholson (far lane) in his Eliminator II Mercury Cyclone Funny Car in 1968. Image: Ernie Ohlson

Although never hosting a major drag racing event in it’s short existence, the track hosted some of the greats, including “Big Daddy” Don Garlits and Jim Dunn. Unrelated to drag racing, it was home to the Cam-Am championship finale and the USAC Champ Cars, with the likes of A.J. Foyt, Mario Andretti, Parnelli Jones, and Bobby Unser competing on the road course.

The Stardust Hotel was sold in 1969 and its new owners largely abandoned the track. Track Manager Larry Horton leased the land and continued holding drag races until 1970. Some time thereafter, the land was purchased by a real estate developer who built the Spring Valley community on it. Today, the plot of land that once hosted legendary drivers can only be visualized under a sea of homes in the Spring Valley development.