Century 21 Raceways
Picadilly Road Aurora, CO 80011
N 39 44.703 W 104 44.089
 

This is the fifth of a series of American Race Tracks in which some are defunct and some are still going. I have spent a great deal of my adult life racing cars of all types and so this will be fun revisiting the racetracks of yesteryear. Be sure to add any photos or comments if you have experienced them too. .

Century 21 Raceway
Historical Note: The 1/3 mile oval opened on July 4th, 1971, operating through 1973. The 1/4 mile dragstrip operated from 1971 through 1973. According to America's Speedways, a road course operated from 1971 through 1973. This would have had to have used the dragstrip and return road, as the planned road course was to use parts of the big oval that was never completed.

It closed in late 1973 but it stayed fully intact for years and remnants of the facility are still there today...see the Google Earth picture. Even to this day there are no houses near by it has an easy access exit right off of I-70 at Gun Club Road.

When the track was closed through out the 70's and 80's (when it was still in good condition) we hoped someone would open it back up.

The car club I was in back then even tried to get a lease on the track but it was in some kind of bankruptcy deal and we couldn’t make it happen.

I raced there in 1972 and 1973 with my 1965 Chevelle drag car. Later in 1980’s we would go there to test our circle track cars and do a little “street racing”

In the early ‘80’s it was a Mecca for street racers. There was a big hole in the fence off Gun Club and you could just drive in. On any Sunday you could find up to a hundred cars parked around to watch or participate in the impromptu illegal street racing. Some of the cars being the same ones that raced at Bandimere on Saturday night. They would bring their own water along to do the tire burnouts with as there was none there.

Sadly after several fatalities on the property, one of which was a jeep full of kids rolled over climbing the big dirt hill that was the grandstands, it was locked up more securely. Piles of dirt were dumped here and there down the dragstrip to keep the people from ever street racing on it again.

When I was there today hiding the cache I talked to a couple guys there were out there looking for a place to shoot their guns, thus the end of an another piece of Colorado racing history..

I left a well traveled TB for the first to find this cache. Enjoy the history and the hunt.