MRA History
Five decades of motorcycle road racing in the Rockies — street circuits, airport runways, converted drag strips, and finally a track of its own. Sources are linked throughout; if you raced in these eras and can add to the story, post on the bulletin board.
Rocky Mountain beginnings — Woody Creek & Continental Divide
The club was founded in 1973 as the Rocky Mountain Roadracing Association, holding its first competition at Aspen's Woody Creek Raceway in 1974 — a track that had hosted ad-hoc motorcycle racing since 1966. That inaugural season crowned the first-ever Race of the Rockies Series Champion, Woody Witte. In the early years the club also raced Continental Divide Raceway near Castle Rock, one of Colorado's storied (and long since vanished) road courses. The club took its current name — Motorcycle Roadracing Association — around 1989.
Sources: Colorado Motorsports Hall of Fame · Wikipedia
Steamboat Springs — America's street race
For eighteen Septembers the MRA and AHRMA turned the resort roads of Steamboat Springs into "America's only true street circuit" — a 2.2-mile, 11-turn course through the Mt. Werner ski village, run the second week of September when the town was quiet. Steamboat Motorcycle Week combined vintage trials, flat track, motocross, and road racing, closing with the MRA's modern sprint races. Fans watched from condo balconies and picnic hillsides; writers compared it to a small Isle of Man. Cycle World's December 1990 feature "The Secret Springs" noted the 1990 running was already the 10th annual MRA road race there, with legends like Dick Mann and Dave Roper in the paddock. The final year, 1998, drew dignitaries including Dick Mann and Lyle Lovett; a revival was attempted as late as 2007 but never came together.
Sources: Cycle World, "The Secret Springs" (Dec 1990) · Wikipedia · 1997 MRA schedule (rec.motorcycles.racing) · 1991 Steamboat vintage roadracing footage
Second Creek Raceway — the club's home track
Second Creek Raceway was a 1.7-mile road course northeast of Denver, beside the Rocky Mountain Arsenal and about a mile west of where DIA now sits. It was built on the site of the old Denver Dragway (active through the 1960s–70s), and its front straight reused part of the drag strip; the first road-course race was held in 1982. Second Creek became the MRA's workhorse venue for two decades. In 1997, five amateur racing clubs — the MRA among them — pooled roughly $100,000 to take over the track's lease and assets, running it themselves for eight years until the track closed around 2005 as development closed in.
Sources: NA-Motorsports track guide · The History of HPR · Photo archive: Memories of Second Creek
Stapleton Motorsports Park — racing the runways
When Denver's Stapleton International Airport closed in February 1995, its abandoned northern runways got a second life: from 1996 to 1998 the MRA raced them as Stapleton Motorsports Park. The 1997 season schedule shows a June 15 race day there, plus racing schools run off the same tarmac. Redevelopment of the airport property into the Central Park neighborhood ended the era after three seasons.
Sources: Wikipedia · 1997 MRA schedule · Stapleton International Airport
La Junta Raceway — the airport course on the plains
La Junta Raceway is a 1.5-mile, 7-turn course laid out on the grounds of the La Junta Municipal Airport in southeastern Colorado (elevation ~4,100 ft), with no permanent facilities — a genuine old-school airport circuit. The MRA raced there regularly in years past, and the venue appeared on club schedules alongside Second Creek and Pueblo. The club returned for a nostalgic exhibition weekend on April 24–25, 2021, with a Saturday track day and Sunday exhibition races.
Sources: La Junta Raceway · 2021 MRA La Junta Exhibition · MRA: Colorado race tracks
Pikes Peak International Raceway — racing beside the superspeedway
Pikes Peak International Raceway opened in Fountain in 1997, built on the old Pikes Peak Meadows horse-track property as the Rocky Mountain region's first superspeedway. The MRA was there from the start — the club's 1997 schedule already listed an August 10 race date at the brand-new facility, whose 1.3-mile infield road course sits inside the 1-mile D-shaped oval. While the big leagues came and went — nine seasons of IndyCar and NASCAR ran the oval before International Speedway Corporation bought and shuttered the track in October 2005 — the road course outlived them: PPIR was sold and reopened in 2008 under new ownership as a club-racing facility, and it remains a fixture on the MRA calendar today. This site's timing archive alone holds MRA rounds at PPIR from 2014 through 2025.
Sources: Wikipedia: PPIR · "The Rapid Rise and Fall of PPIR" (Oilpressure) · 1997 MRA schedule · RacingCircuits.info
The itinerant years — Mountain View, Pueblo, and beyond
Through the late '90s and 2000s the club raced wherever Colorado offered pavement: Mountain View Motorsports Park (a mainstay of the 1997 calendar), the Adams County Fairgrounds, and Pueblo Motorsports Park (still on the calendar today), with occasional away rounds at Motorsports Park Hastings in Nebraska and Miller Motorsports Park in Utah.
Sources: Colorado Motorsports Hall of Fame · 1997 MRA schedule
Building a home — CAMA and High Plains Raceway
Losing Second Creek galvanized the community. In 2003 the MRA joined four car clubs to form the Colorado Amateur Motorsports Association (CAMA), bought land east of Byers, and built a permanent road course. High Plains Raceway opened in 2009 with the MRA as a 20% owner — the club finally racing on asphalt it holds a stake in. In 2013, its 40th-anniversary year, the MRA received the JC Agajanian Award and was inducted into the Colorado Motorsports Hall of Fame; the club has produced national-level professionals including Hall of Famers Bruce Sass and Donnie Hough, plus Ricky Orlando, Shane Turpin, Mark Schellinger, and Mike Pettiford. Today the MRA runs its Race of the Rockies series at High Plains, Pikes Peak International Raceway, and Pueblo Motorsports Park — the modern era captured in full timing detail in this site's season statistics.
Sources: The History of HPR · Colorado Motorsports Hall of Fame · mra-racing.org
Compiled July 2026 from the linked sources. Raced Steamboat, Second Creek, La Junta, or the Stapleton runways? We'd love period photos and stories for these pages — post on the bulletin board or email dan@cynch.me.