Puyallup MX Track
By Shawn McDonald
Although only in existence for nine years, from 1970 till 1978, it left an indelible mark on each racer and spectator who stepped foot on its surface.
Located close to the cities of Seattle and Tacoma, on Meridian and 156th Street East at the north end of the Pierce County Airport, in south Puyallup, the track was close to the urban as well as suburban populations. For eight of those nine years it brought the best motocross riders in the world to our backwater corner of the United States, and let us see what true excellence really was. Racers such as world champions Joel Robert, Bengt Aberg, Heikki Mikkola, Roger DeCoster, Hakkan Anderson, Gerrit Wolsink, Ake Jonsson and many others invaded our shores each fall to compete in the Trans-Am series that swept across the US. They catapulted the competitive bar for US racers had to reach. Such riders as Jim Pomeroy, Bob Hannah and Brad Lackey, Danny LaPorte, Chuck Sun finally reached and surpassed it after many years of hard work.
Each year the Puyallup Trans-Am was the biggest event in Washington State, outside the Seafair Hydroplane race, with 25,000-plus people attending. Many motorcyclists today can tell you the exact place they stood on the track at the 1974 race with mud up to their ankles. It was like living in the movie Field of Dreams, only this time the motocross stars came out of the cornfield instead of baseball players.
After the international stars left it became a breeding ground for future NW stars to learn their craft upon. To be somebody, you had to win at Puyallup. To be anybody, you had to at least race at Puyallup. You might even get your name in the Seattle Times. A race at Puyallup was always a big race, whether it was in a snowstorm or blistering heat. It brought out all the local stars. You can imagine the dreams it conjured in a young racer’s head, to be racing on the same track as Robert and DeCoster only one week after they had touched the soil.
The track was within sight of Meridian in what was almost a quarry pit where they dumped tons of sand to make it race-able. Like weeds, mysterious rocks would sprout up through the track. You needed a fast motor for the long straights and the horsepower-sucking sand. This then quickly turned the track into a bumpy, whoop filled endurance event with big jumps. Many a time a racer would be totally exhausted at the end of the race, and would gas it over Mt Rainer and not be able to hold on to the bars. Splat!
Back in the pits you had somebody knock your hands off the handlebars because your fingers would no longer open. This was a track that required good suspension, and if you didn’t have the best components you would find the shock oil lubricating your chain. It was never a technical track, and because of the never changing layout many found it had lost its challenge over the years. Until the Supercross came to Seattle, and then left, the Trans-Am at Puyallup was the biggest motoring event in the northwest.
Jim Pomeroy: The coolest thing about Puyallup is that they never cancelled a race day, and would run through rain, shine, snow or sleet. They would even bulldoze the snow off the track to put on a race. I really liked the course because it was almost all sand, and would get really rough and whooped out by the end of the day. Because it was so wide the fast lines could change almost every lap, and it was the smart rider who was in the best physical condition who would win. Most of the jumps were sky jumps in that they didn’t put you up very high in the air, but you went 100 to 150 feet down the track. Today they would throw in a couple of jumps underneath, and call it a double or a triple jump. A lot of the Europeans who came over to race the Trans-Ams liked Puyallup more than the other tracks, because there were so many different racing lines to choose from compared to a California adobe clay track, where there was only one blue line to go fast on. When the international stars would race at Puyallup I was no longer from Yakima, I was now a homeboy from Puyallup racing on my back yard track. There was a lot of pressure on me to do well at Puyallup, but I did have an advantage because I did know the track better than they did.
Ron Pomeroy: Puyallup was one of my favorite tracks. It was a long track where the course would constantly change during the race, so you didn’t have to play follow the leader and you could pass people if you didn’t get a good start. It was a fast horsepower track that also had downhill off-camber corners with a bunch of jumps. We would drive over from Yakima almost every Saturday night in the winter because we knew they would race the next day. I remember racing there when it was knee deep in water in a couple of places, and they ran us through. There were times when it was pretty rocky, but then the next weekend the rocks seemed to magically disappear and it was all sand. It was a fun track to race on, and I have a lot of good memories from being there.
Tammy Sessions: It was one of the first MX tracks I raced on that had some big jumps on it, like Mt Rainer. They had some spectacular crashes off that jump. Puyallup was a big professional track, with lots of spectators to watch the races. When you watched the World Champions race at Puyallup, and then raced there the next weekend, you felt like you were driving backwards.
Ted DeVol: The dirt on the track was pretty good for this region, with a mix of sand and dirt and very few rocks. It was a fairly easy track to race on in that it wasn’t too technical. They had the Mt Rainer jump, that was huge back then. The fast guys would land flat on the backside of the jump. It was a fast track that got real rough for the amount of suspension we had then. The big whoops came right before the back tabletop jump, and then you faced these giant braking bumps after the short straight leading into the top left corner. The start was really long, at about 150 yards, and then you got funneled into a couple of corners and up the hill. One thing I remember most about Puyallup is that it almost never changed. Except when they shortened it for the night races it was the same track in 1970 as it was in 1978. Overall, I don’t think it was a very challenging track, not like the Startup track. I remember Pat Jacobson went through the ‘S’ corners so stinking fast that he just railed those three corners. Nobody could possibly go that fast through there.
Marvin Sykes: I had just moved up to Washington two weeks before the 1974 Trans-Am race at Puyallup, and the place just seemed bigger than life to me. One week after the Trans-Am I raced for the first time at the track and it was in really bad shape, but there, standing beside it, was Buck Murphy. I was a 14-year-old kid, and I thought hey, I am actually standing on the same race track as Buck Murphy is standing on. This was the same Buck who had raced on his factory Can-Am in front of 25,000 people the week before.
I drive by the old track quite a bit, and I still can’t help but look out at that old field. I can’t believe that huge race track fit into that small field. It just seemed much bigger in its day. My favorite part of the track was the hairpin corner, and the jump that followed into the first corner. I remember one racer coming up behind me there and screaming at the top of his lungs like he was mad at me. That distracted me for a second, and he passed me and I went “Oh, crud!” I learned that lesson at Puyallup.
I never raced on any other track that could compare to Puyallup. The jumps were really cool, because you could get up some speed and jump for long distance. You didn’t get a lot of height, but would go a long way. When you walked the track in the morning and climbed up the jumps and saw the whole track, it was just breathtaking to look at. Puyallup was what I thought a motocross track should be, it was just beautiful. The soil there had the history of many world champions who had dug their knobbies into the same dirt I now got to race on. Larry McKenzie, from Canada, used to throw his factory Yamaha completely sideways off the tunnel jump that led into a right hand sweeper.
Mitch Simmons: Puyallup was a fast and fun track with big jumps, like Mt Rainer and the hairpin corner. I really liked the tunnel jump, because you could kick it sideways in the air for the next corner full throttle. I got the most air time at Puyallup, because of all the jumps, than any other track I ever raced on. You would always wipe your face off with a wet towel after a race because all that sand from the track would have found a way into your mouth, teeth and eyes.
Randy McAlister: It was my favorite track. The Puyallup MX track was the only international track in the northwest. It was professional, in that it was fully fenced and could accommodate up to 100,000 spectators. I remember always getting great starts, and hole shotting my class at Puyallup. So needless to say I timed the gate pretty well. I always pitted behind the tower so it was only a few feet to the starting line. I remember they had an amateur national there once, and a very young Danny ‘Magoo’ Chandler would use the side ridges of the jump after the hairpin as an extra berm. He was the first one that would do a cross up over Mt Rainer, and then take his hand off the bars and wave it at us.
Buck Murphy: It was a good track to race on. The whole layout had the right mix of jumps with corners and straights. Most of the other MX tracks at that time were natural terrain courses, but Puyallup came up with a purpose made MX track with jumps. They created a pretty interesting course with elevation changes, off cambers, thirteen or more jumps and a wide track. But if you went too fast over the Mt Rainer jump you would land out flat, and snuff yourself.
The Trans-Am was a pretty neat race to be in because the whole course would be lined with people, three to four deep. I had the advantage at the international events of being the hometown boy, because I knew where the lines were going to be before they were there. In practice they groomed the track glass smooth, and later on in the day the soft stuff would disappear and it would get down to the old bumps under the track. At that point is when you go to the smooth line versus the fast line because it got so rough, and I had the advantage of knowing when to change lines. Because of that I was probably one of the faster guys around that track. When I raced Jimmy Ellis in the 250 Support class at the 1975 Trans-Am we were turning two seconds a lap faster that the Open class Internationals, because the 250s were just perfect for the track. With the 125s you would just pin the throttle wide open around the entire course, where the Open bikes went fast until it started getting rough, and then they started beating you to death.
It had one of those funny cable starting gates, and I got stuck in that one day where it hooked me and threw me over the bars, and my bike just stood there with the cable all wrapped up in the shocks.
I really liked the section leading up to the tabletop jump, and up to the dipsy doodle, and then back down the course. It was the hotbed race track with Pomeroy, Gordy Ochs, Polen, Mark Gregson, Dave Bunker, Bobby Boock, Mitch Simmons, Chuck Sun, Burgett, and as I was getting out of racing there was Pat Jacobson, who was coming up.
Pat Jacobson: I considered Puyallup my home track. What I most remember about Puyallup was at the Trans-Am race when I was 10 or 11. Roger DeCoster passed two guys in the air on the Speedway jump on the back straightaway, then pushed his bars forward and passed two more guys upon landing and hitting the gas.
I remember streakers at the intermission of the Friday night races, and guys riding around on bikes with no clothes on. I thought that was pretty funny. I also remember at intermission they had running races from the starting gate to the top of the hill, and you couldn’t take your boots off.
I really wanted to race the Trans-Am, but the year I turned Pro in 1978 was the year they didn’t run it. Every Sunday throughout the year there were 30 riders entered in each Pro class, and from 350 to 700 racers signed up overall.
I liked the whoops before the Speedway jump, because when I first started racing that’s where I was thrown off. That was always a big tank slapper area if you didn’t have enough speed. The combination of the right corner before, the whoops and then the Speedway jump were my favorites. The jump where I could get the most air was after the hairpin that ran parallel to the start line. I had a Puyallup address in high school, so the Puyallup MX track – especially on a Friday night – was home to me.
.
By Shawn McDonald
Although only in existence for nine years, from 1970 till 1978, it left an indelible mark on each racer and spectator who stepped foot on its surface.
Located close to the cities of Seattle and Tacoma, on Meridian and 156th Street East at the north end of the Pierce County Airport, in south Puyallup, the track was close to the urban as well as suburban populations. For eight of those nine years it brought the best motocross riders in the world to our backwater corner of the United States, and let us see what true excellence really was. Racers such as world champions Joel Robert, Bengt Aberg, Heikki Mikkola, Roger DeCoster, Hakkan Anderson, Gerrit Wolsink, Ake Jonsson and many others invaded our shores each fall to compete in the Trans-Am series that swept across the US. They catapulted the competitive bar for US racers had to reach. Such riders as Jim Pomeroy, Bob Hannah and Brad Lackey, Danny LaPorte, Chuck Sun finally reached and surpassed it after many years of hard work.
Each year the Puyallup Trans-Am was the biggest event in Washington State, outside the Seafair Hydroplane race, with 25,000-plus people attending. Many motorcyclists today can tell you the exact place they stood on the track at the 1974 race with mud up to their ankles. It was like living in the movie Field of Dreams, only this time the motocross stars came out of the cornfield instead of baseball players.
After the international stars left it became a breeding ground for future NW stars to learn their craft upon. To be somebody, you had to win at Puyallup. To be anybody, you had to at least race at Puyallup. You might even get your name in the Seattle Times. A race at Puyallup was always a big race, whether it was in a snowstorm or blistering heat. It brought out all the local stars. You can imagine the dreams it conjured in a young racer’s head, to be racing on the same track as Robert and DeCoster only one week after they had touched the soil.
The track was within sight of Meridian in what was almost a quarry pit where they dumped tons of sand to make it race-able. Like weeds, mysterious rocks would sprout up through the track. You needed a fast motor for the long straights and the horsepower-sucking sand. This then quickly turned the track into a bumpy, whoop filled endurance event with big jumps. Many a time a racer would be totally exhausted at the end of the race, and would gas it over Mt Rainer and not be able to hold on to the bars. Splat!
Back in the pits you had somebody knock your hands off the handlebars because your fingers would no longer open. This was a track that required good suspension, and if you didn’t have the best components you would find the shock oil lubricating your chain. It was never a technical track, and because of the never changing layout many found it had lost its challenge over the years. Until the Supercross came to Seattle, and then left, the Trans-Am at Puyallup was the biggest motoring event in the northwest.
Jim Pomeroy: The coolest thing about Puyallup is that they never cancelled a race day, and would run through rain, shine, snow or sleet. They would even bulldoze the snow off the track to put on a race. I really liked the course because it was almost all sand, and would get really rough and whooped out by the end of the day. Because it was so wide the fast lines could change almost every lap, and it was the smart rider who was in the best physical condition who would win. Most of the jumps were sky jumps in that they didn’t put you up very high in the air, but you went 100 to 150 feet down the track. Today they would throw in a couple of jumps underneath, and call it a double or a triple jump. A lot of the Europeans who came over to race the Trans-Ams liked Puyallup more than the other tracks, because there were so many different racing lines to choose from compared to a California adobe clay track, where there was only one blue line to go fast on. When the international stars would race at Puyallup I was no longer from Yakima, I was now a homeboy from Puyallup racing on my back yard track. There was a lot of pressure on me to do well at Puyallup, but I did have an advantage because I did know the track better than they did.
Ron Pomeroy: Puyallup was one of my favorite tracks. It was a long track where the course would constantly change during the race, so you didn’t have to play follow the leader and you could pass people if you didn’t get a good start. It was a fast horsepower track that also had downhill off-camber corners with a bunch of jumps. We would drive over from Yakima almost every Saturday night in the winter because we knew they would race the next day. I remember racing there when it was knee deep in water in a couple of places, and they ran us through. There were times when it was pretty rocky, but then the next weekend the rocks seemed to magically disappear and it was all sand. It was a fun track to race on, and I have a lot of good memories from being there.
Tammy Sessions: It was one of the first MX tracks I raced on that had some big jumps on it, like Mt Rainer. They had some spectacular crashes off that jump. Puyallup was a big professional track, with lots of spectators to watch the races. When you watched the World Champions race at Puyallup, and then raced there the next weekend, you felt like you were driving backwards.
Ted DeVol: The dirt on the track was pretty good for this region, with a mix of sand and dirt and very few rocks. It was a fairly easy track to race on in that it wasn’t too technical. They had the Mt Rainer jump, that was huge back then. The fast guys would land flat on the backside of the jump. It was a fast track that got real rough for the amount of suspension we had then. The big whoops came right before the back tabletop jump, and then you faced these giant braking bumps after the short straight leading into the top left corner. The start was really long, at about 150 yards, and then you got funneled into a couple of corners and up the hill. One thing I remember most about Puyallup is that it almost never changed. Except when they shortened it for the night races it was the same track in 1970 as it was in 1978. Overall, I don’t think it was a very challenging track, not like the Startup track. I remember Pat Jacobson went through the ‘S’ corners so stinking fast that he just railed those three corners. Nobody could possibly go that fast through there.
Marvin Sykes: I had just moved up to Washington two weeks before the 1974 Trans-Am race at Puyallup, and the place just seemed bigger than life to me. One week after the Trans-Am I raced for the first time at the track and it was in really bad shape, but there, standing beside it, was Buck Murphy. I was a 14-year-old kid, and I thought hey, I am actually standing on the same race track as Buck Murphy is standing on. This was the same Buck who had raced on his factory Can-Am in front of 25,000 people the week before.
I drive by the old track quite a bit, and I still can’t help but look out at that old field. I can’t believe that huge race track fit into that small field. It just seemed much bigger in its day. My favorite part of the track was the hairpin corner, and the jump that followed into the first corner. I remember one racer coming up behind me there and screaming at the top of his lungs like he was mad at me. That distracted me for a second, and he passed me and I went “Oh, crud!” I learned that lesson at Puyallup.
I never raced on any other track that could compare to Puyallup. The jumps were really cool, because you could get up some speed and jump for long distance. You didn’t get a lot of height, but would go a long way. When you walked the track in the morning and climbed up the jumps and saw the whole track, it was just breathtaking to look at. Puyallup was what I thought a motocross track should be, it was just beautiful. The soil there had the history of many world champions who had dug their knobbies into the same dirt I now got to race on. Larry McKenzie, from Canada, used to throw his factory Yamaha completely sideways off the tunnel jump that led into a right hand sweeper.
Mitch Simmons: Puyallup was a fast and fun track with big jumps, like Mt Rainer and the hairpin corner. I really liked the tunnel jump, because you could kick it sideways in the air for the next corner full throttle. I got the most air time at Puyallup, because of all the jumps, than any other track I ever raced on. You would always wipe your face off with a wet towel after a race because all that sand from the track would have found a way into your mouth, teeth and eyes.
Randy McAlister: It was my favorite track. The Puyallup MX track was the only international track in the northwest. It was professional, in that it was fully fenced and could accommodate up to 100,000 spectators. I remember always getting great starts, and hole shotting my class at Puyallup. So needless to say I timed the gate pretty well. I always pitted behind the tower so it was only a few feet to the starting line. I remember they had an amateur national there once, and a very young Danny ‘Magoo’ Chandler would use the side ridges of the jump after the hairpin as an extra berm. He was the first one that would do a cross up over Mt Rainer, and then take his hand off the bars and wave it at us.
Buck Murphy: It was a good track to race on. The whole layout had the right mix of jumps with corners and straights. Most of the other MX tracks at that time were natural terrain courses, but Puyallup came up with a purpose made MX track with jumps. They created a pretty interesting course with elevation changes, off cambers, thirteen or more jumps and a wide track. But if you went too fast over the Mt Rainer jump you would land out flat, and snuff yourself.
The Trans-Am was a pretty neat race to be in because the whole course would be lined with people, three to four deep. I had the advantage at the international events of being the hometown boy, because I knew where the lines were going to be before they were there. In practice they groomed the track glass smooth, and later on in the day the soft stuff would disappear and it would get down to the old bumps under the track. At that point is when you go to the smooth line versus the fast line because it got so rough, and I had the advantage of knowing when to change lines. Because of that I was probably one of the faster guys around that track. When I raced Jimmy Ellis in the 250 Support class at the 1975 Trans-Am we were turning two seconds a lap faster that the Open class Internationals, because the 250s were just perfect for the track. With the 125s you would just pin the throttle wide open around the entire course, where the Open bikes went fast until it started getting rough, and then they started beating you to death.
It had one of those funny cable starting gates, and I got stuck in that one day where it hooked me and threw me over the bars, and my bike just stood there with the cable all wrapped up in the shocks.
I really liked the section leading up to the tabletop jump, and up to the dipsy doodle, and then back down the course. It was the hotbed race track with Pomeroy, Gordy Ochs, Polen, Mark Gregson, Dave Bunker, Bobby Boock, Mitch Simmons, Chuck Sun, Burgett, and as I was getting out of racing there was Pat Jacobson, who was coming up.
Pat Jacobson: I considered Puyallup my home track. What I most remember about Puyallup was at the Trans-Am race when I was 10 or 11. Roger DeCoster passed two guys in the air on the Speedway jump on the back straightaway, then pushed his bars forward and passed two more guys upon landing and hitting the gas.
I remember streakers at the intermission of the Friday night races, and guys riding around on bikes with no clothes on. I thought that was pretty funny. I also remember at intermission they had running races from the starting gate to the top of the hill, and you couldn’t take your boots off.
I really wanted to race the Trans-Am, but the year I turned Pro in 1978 was the year they didn’t run it. Every Sunday throughout the year there were 30 riders entered in each Pro class, and from 350 to 700 racers signed up overall.
I liked the whoops before the Speedway jump, because when I first started racing that’s where I was thrown off. That was always a big tank slapper area if you didn’t have enough speed. The combination of the right corner before, the whoops and then the Speedway jump were my favorites. The jump where I could get the most air was after the hairpin that ran parallel to the start line. I had a Puyallup address in high school, so the Puyallup MX track – especially on a Friday night – was home to me.
.
