Drive three miles west of Hartford on Highway 38 on a Saturday night this past summer and you'd have seen headlights lined up along the shoulder before the sun even dropped below the grain bins. I-90 Speedway has been calling 2026 its 50th anniversary season, and the banners around the track say the same thing. What they don't mention is that the lights at that 3/8-mile high-banked dirt oval went dark for several years in the middle of that half-century, and nobody actually raced there the whole time.
That gap is not a knock on the track. It is the more interesting story, and it explains why longtime Hartford racing fans talk about "50 years" the way people talk about a family farm that changed hands twice but never changed its name on the mailbox.
What Fifty Years Actually Counts
The math behind the anniversary works backward from 1976, which puts I-90 Speedway's original opening roughly half a century before this year's checkered flags. That's the number on the banners, and it's accurate as a founding date. What it doesn't capture is continuous operation. Track history reported by the Argus Leader and Madison Daily Leader in April 2016 documented I-90 Speedway ceasing operations that year, a closure that left the oval sitting quiet for the next few seasons.
So the 50th anniversary season isn't a claim that racing has happened every single Saturday since the Bicentennial. It's a claim about the track's founding, which is a different and still legitimate thing to celebrate. The distinction matters if you're the kind of Hartford resident who remembers exactly which years the lights were off, because the arithmetic only works if you count the gap as part of the story rather than something to skip past.
The Reopening Under New Ownership
The track came back in 2019 under new management, with Lyle and Dawn Howey taking over as owners. That reopening is the reason there's a 2026 season to have an anniversary about at all. A closed dirt track doesn't reopen itself, and the fact that I-90 Speedway is currently in its best documented form in years traces directly back to that ownership change rather than to any uninterrupted institutional memory.
Once the Howeys had the track running again, the calendar filled back in with the kind of Saturday-night regularity that made the speedway a fixture west of town in the first place.
This Year, Week by Week
The 2026 season didn't start with a race. It started with a car show.
| Date | Milestone | What Happened |
|---|---|---|
| April 25, 2026 | Car Show & Practice Day | The season kicked off with a car show at The 18th Amendment in Sioux Falls, running from registration at 9 a.m. through trophies at 1 p.m., before the action shifted back to the Hartford oval around 3 p.m. for open practice. |
| First Saturday in May | Points racing begins | The competitive racing season proper got underway the first weekend of May, distinct from the April practice day. |
| August 22, 2026 | Hobby Stock Nationals | Two USRA divisions took the green flag for a night built around side-by-side racing in the Hobby Stock ranks. |
| August 29, 2026 | Weekly RPM Racing Series night | Driver Dustin Gulbrandson put together the biggest charge through the field of the night, in another card featuring two USRA divisions. |
| September 12, 2026 | Season Championship | Logan Fitzpatrick of Worthing won the Hobby Stock feature, with Landon Krohn of Rowena claiming the season points title in that division. In the B-Mods, Micah Janssen of Lennox took the feature win while Duke Erickson secured the championship. Garet Deboer factored into the Late Model Street Stock finale as well. |
| November 14, 2026 | Awards Banquet | The season closes out with a banquet capping what the track itself has called an unforgettable 50th anniversary campaign. |
That September 12 finale is worth sitting with for a second. A season championship in dirt track racing isn't decided by one race. Fitzpatrick won the final Hobby Stock feature of the year, but Krohn is the one who walked away with the season title, which means the points battle was already effectively settled before that last Saturday even started. That's a common enough pattern in weekly racing, where consistency across a whole summer outweighs any single night, but it's the kind of detail that only shows up if you were tracking the standings rather than just the final results.
The Cars That Actually Race Here
I-90 Speedway isn't a single-class track, and the variety is part of what fills a Saturday night. The regular lineup includes:
- IMCA RaceSaver Sprint Cars
- Late Model Street Stocks
- USRA B-Modifieds
- USRA Hobby Stocks
- Tri-State Late Model Series, which joins the card for select events
Four to five classes running the same night means a full evening of racing rather than a handful of features stretched thin, and it's a big part of why the track has held onto its Saturday-night audience through a decade that included both a shutdown and a rebuild.
What the Anniversary Actually Signals
A track that opened in 1976, went dark in 2016, and came back in 2019 under new ownership isn't a story about uninterrupted tradition. It's a story about a piece of Hartford's identity that a couple of owners decided was worth reviving rather than letting stay closed. The 50-year number on the banners is honest about the track's origin. The gap in the middle is honest about what it actually took to get back to a season like this one, with a full class lineup, a finale that drew real competition for the points titles, and a banquet on the calendar to close it out properly.
For anyone who's driven Highway 38 on a summer Saturday and wondered why the lights are back on after years of an empty lot west of town, that's the answer. It wasn't always racing. It is now, and the November 14 banquet is where this particular chapter gets its bow.
If you're headed to that banquet, or you've got a favorite driver from this year's points battle, Chris Foster grew up around those same Saturday nights on Highway 38 and always enjoys comparing notes on who's racing well this season. Let's Connect.
