MORRISON — In the fall of 1957, auto parts businessman John Bandimere paid $11,000 for a plot of about 180 acres nestled up against the hogback of the Jefferson County foothills.
He then went to an auction and bought a scraper, a grader and two pushers. In 1958, with the help of hired friends, Bandimere moved several thousand tons of dirt and built a track and all the necessary equipment to maintain it by himself.
It marked the humble start of a 65-year run for the now world-renowned Bandimere Speedway, which is closing at the end of this year and will host Mile-High Nationals for the last time this weekend.
The facility first known as the Safety Proving Grounds of America came from two motivations: Bandimere, who was in the high-performance auto parts business, wanted a place to test his wares. He also wanted a safe space for the area’s youth to race, including his son, John Bandimere Jr. — who was a street racer in his younger days, and has served as the track’s showrunner for about the past four decades.
“My dad loved cars, and he loved his ’57 Chevy Black Widow,” explained John “Sporty” Bandimere III, Bandimere Jr.’s son and now part of the third generation of the family to run the speedway. “So my grandparents really wanted a place where the kids could go and race safely. And my grandfather, as a high-performance auto manufacturer, wanted a place where the manufacturers could go and test products.
“The two things went hand-in-hand. My grandfather never really looked at it as being a profitable enterprise — it was more about giving people a place to go and race and be passionate (about cars).”
The initial facility, built on the exact location as the current speedway, was Bandimere’s second choice for a plot after his first selection near the former Jolly Rancher factory in Wheat Ridge was met with stiff neighborhood resistance.
Bandimere’s self-made speedway featured an oval track, drag strip, testing facility and garages to teach young drivers about auto repair. At the beginning, Bandimere offered SPGA “lifetime memberships” for $75 to auto manufacturers, but besides that, there wasn’t much of an effort or desire to generate revenue.
That changed in the 1970s, when escalating property taxes and operational costs forced Bandimere Jr. to hand over the reins of the auto-parts business to his brother so the family could try to develop a true revenue stream on Thunder Mountain. As a result, the track (at that point known by its current name) hosted its first National Hot Rod Association national event in 1977. The Mile-High Nationals followed a year later.
“That’s when we really went from a small community track and testing ground, and became a true speedway,” Sporty Bandimere said.
But by the 1980s, the seeds of the Denver-metro population boom — the same one that eventually pinned the speedway in and contributed to the family’s decision to sell — were already affecting the facility. When C-470 was built in the latter part of that decade, Jefferson County took some of the Bandimeres’ land in exchange for other, smaller parcels, changing the landscape of the property. The family eventually had to cut into the mountain to give the facility more space behind the raceway.
The Bandimeres then faced a pony-up-or-go-home moment in 1988. With costs rising and the facility’s capacity limited to about 8,000 seats, it was either time to cash out or go big.
“We were at the point where we were either going to have to shut down, or expand and do a major renovation,” explained speedway executive Tami Bandimere, John Bandimere Jr.’s daughter.
The family chose the latter, a $4 million improvement project that increased the capacity nearly threefold to 23,500. The refurbished Bandimere Speedway debuted in 1989 after a year hiatus from the pro races and was dubbed one of three NHRA super-tracks in the country, ushering in another era of growth and popularity.
The renovation was a big leap for a family that had, at that point, spearheaded the construction of speedway entirely by themselves. A sponsorship with MOPAR began that year and also contributed to helping save the track. That partnership remained a financial pillar for the speedway from that point on, with Bandimere’s Dodge/MOPAR sponsorship currently the longest-running active event/race sponsorship in motorsports.
“My father never wanted me to borrow any money,” John Bandimere Jr. said. “When he passed away in 1986, I went into debt (from the renovation). Boy, it’s been a tough go, and there were times I thought he might have been right. But the Lord saw us through.”
Before the renovation, and after, the track developed a reputation as an incubator for advancements in the racing industry — a notoriety that fits in with John Bandimere’s vision for the SPGA as a hub for high-performance auto testing and innovation.
In the early 1980s, local racer Bob Brockmeyer worked with facility manager Larry Crispe (Bandimere Jr.’s son-in-law) to develop the Compulink timing system, which has since become the worldwide standard for drag racing timing. Crispe also invented a tire rotator machine. The Zamboni-like device is used to prep the track, and is another advancement that’s become commonplace in racing.
In 2014, Crispe made history again by working with engineers and a local plumber to develop the world’s only temperature regulation system underneath a racetrack. The system, which features 10,000 feet of tubing buried about eight inches beneath the track, can heat the track in the event of snowmelt and also cool the track when it gets blazing during the speedway’s most prominent event, Mile-High Nationals, each July. It’s powered by two 12,000-gallon water tanks and a third 8,000-gallon tank.
Crispe said the idea to install the piping came because the track, already batting the inherent difficulties of racing at 5,800 feet, was “struggling with the quality of the races we were putting on at the national event.” The system cools the starting line, the 40 feet behind it and the 160 feet beyond it to allow drivers to get going quicker.
“When (NHRA drivers) come here in July, it’s usually as hot as it can get — 140, 145 degrees on the track,” Crispe explained. “Fans don’t come here to see the guy hit the gas and smoke the tires. They want to see the cars go down the track, and they want to see a good show with close races. We were going to replace the starting line that year anyway. After we did it, the quality of the show was incredible.”
In the first Mile-High Nationals following the installation of the system, seven of eight NHRA track records were broken. John Force, a 16-time funny car champion and the NHRA’s most accomplished driver, called the invention “a stroke of genius.”
“It changed the track overnight, and took an awesome track with an already incredible environment, and made it great and more fun to race,” Force said.
But as development closed in on the track, the speed couldn’t last forever on Thunder Mountain. The Bandimeres are under contract to sell the property, likely to a company in the auto industry, and have hopes to build a new facility on a plot about 10 times as big out on the eastern plains near Denver International Airport. Bandimere Jr. hopes to have that facility built by 2025, likely with the support of outside investors.
The speedway’s imminent closure, and the uncertain future of Mile-High Nationals beyond this weekend, is padding the nostalgia felt by racers and fans alike.
Force called the speedway racing’s Mount Rushmore and “the eighth wonder of the world, carved into the side of a mountain.” Leah Pruett, Mile-High Nationals’ defending Top Fuel champion, said Bandimere is her favorite speedway and dubbed its annual NHRA event “more important” than any other race on her schedule.
“The U.S. Nationals (held at Lucas Oil Indianapolis Raceway Park) is great and it’s the mecca, but for me, the best experience is here at Mile High and at Bandimere Speedway,” Pruett said. “It’s the most important, most prestigious and most difficult race to endure on every level from the tuning to the driver, and the fans are amazing and right on top of you. It’s the most extreme race, and this is the most extreme sport, so I see it as the most extreme accomplishment I can have (in a single race).”
It will all be going away at the end of this year, after the speedway’s final event: a Christmas lights special they are planning in December. Bandimere Jr. acknowledged the pending sale “doesn’t feel right, but there’s always a time for things to change, and that time is now.”
But the storied history of a little speedway that morphed into a marquee stop on the NHRA circuit won’t go away, even after the bulldozers come.
“It started from nothing, and it’s been our family making it work the whole time, to make this a community beacon,” Tami Bandimere said. “That’s what is most rewarding to us. We’ve gone through so much, and we’ve put so much into (the facility) to make it what it is today. My grandparents would be proud. Now that we’ve come to this place, we feel like we’ve finally arrived — and then it’s over.”
