Happy to oblige. Another of those short-lived entertainment experiments that seem to typify Las Vegas in the 1950s and '60s, from 1965-'70, the land west of the Strip that is now occupied by the Spring Valley development, Las Vegas' first master-planned community (and an interesting story in its own right), was home to the Stardust International Raceway.
It featured a flat, three-mile (4.8 km), 13-turn road course, and a quarter-mile drag strip. Long before the massive stadiums and million-dollar DJs, this facility was built by the property's owners, in conjunction with the Riviera, specifically to attract high rollers to the two Strip casinos. The Stardust Raceway looked to be establishing a place for itself on the map, too, when in 1966 the track began hosting the season finale of the Can-Am championship. Two years later, the USAC Championship Car series held a race at the Stardust Raceway and many big names graced the track with their wheels, including Mario Andretti, Dan Gurney, Mark Donohue, Jackie Stewart, and Bruce McLaren, who set the track record of 1:29.63 in the McLaren M8A-Chevrolet during the 1968 Can-Am, which was won by fellow Kiwi Denny Hulme.
As it turned out, however, none of this mattered much when, in November 1969, the Stardust was sold for an undisclosed amount to the Parvin-Dohrmann Company. Also involved in ownership of the Aladdin and Fremont casinos, around this very time the company found itself, in the words of some coverage of the scandal by the New York Times, dated April 9, 1970: "involved in a welter of controversy for more than a year on charges ranging from illegal stock dealings to seeking influence with Federal officials."
In light of this distracting backdrop, it's perhaps not surprising that the Stardust International Raceway does not seem to have figured prominently among the priorities of its new owners, who pretty much ignored its existence. The track's manager, Larry Horton, apparently leased the land himself and ran drag racing events for a short while, but his private playground didn't last too long when, in 1970, the land was sold to developers Pardee Homes, signalling the end of the road, quite literally, for the Stardust International Raceway (click the link to see a couple of cool flashback photos from its 1968 heyday).
It was not the end of Las Vegas Strip casinos' history with motor racing, as we recall the even shorter-lived Caesars Palace Grand Prix but that, like Spring Valley, is the subject of another story, for another day...
