Off-roaders pack street

Families huddled with their Baja bugs, trucks and buggies. Onlookers gawked at exposed engines, giant tires and shock absorbers taller than some kids.

A time traveler might have thought it was 1989, if not for vendors offering racers downloads from Global Positioning Satellites and bodies tattooed more colorfully than most race cars.

Times have changed, but the Southern Nevada Off Road Enthusiasts organization opted to turn back the clock last year when it resurrected the Mint 400, which was the country’s biggest desert race from 1968 to 1989.

This year’s activities were expanded further to include the Fremont Street Experience.

The last time tech inspection was held downtown, it wasn’t under a canopy seven blocks long.

All of the nearly 240 vehicles were pushed through the Experience to inspection stations near Eighth Street in preparation for today’s racing, which begins at 7 a.m. near the Moapa Paiute Travel Plaza at state Route 168 and Interstate 15 near Valley of Fire State Park.

“In its heyday the Mint 400 tech inspection was so popular that kids were even cutting school to gather on Fremont Street,” said K.J. Howe, who became the event’s race director in the early 1970s.

In 1988, Ron Woolworth, now 62, traveled to Las Vegas for the Mint from his home in Riverside, Calif., to help pit for a team owned by Danny Porter. About four years later, Woolworth and his family moved to Las Vegas.

His son, Robby, never had a chance to cut school for the Mint’s big day on Fremont Street. But he had been going to Southern California races with his father and heard stories about the Mint.

“What makes this race so special is its history,” he said. “It’s exciting to be part of it.”

Robby Woolworth will compete in a Class 7 Ford pickup he built and uses to promote his Woolworth Motorsports business, which builds off-road vehicles and fabricates parts in the industrial park adjacent to Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

Like most involved with the revived Mint 400, the younger Woolworth acknowledges the stature of the new race isn’t what it was 20 or 30 years ago.

But he doesn’t care. It’s still the Mint 400, and it’s still four laps of 100 miles.

At one time it was the world’s richest and most demanding desert race. The decline began when the Mint hotel and casino was sold and became part of Binion’s Horseshoe.

And the desert was more frontier than public park in those days.

“The rules and regulations were a lot looser then,” Ron Woolworth said of desert races before the Bureau of Land Management became more involved.

Most teams, including the Woolworths, will leave town by dawn to begin setting up their pit areas. Thirty years ago, racers and thousands of spectators would have camped out the night before the Mint.

Last night, veterans could only dream of those good old days.

Contact reporter Jeff Wolf at jwolf@ reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0247.