The strip was established in 1954 on taxiway surfaces at Inyokern Airport, taking advantage of the long flat expanses of tarmac common to wartime-era airfields. It was operated by the Dust Devils car club, promoted by Bernie Patridge. The Dust Devils held regular competitive meetings through the decades, and the strip was sanctioned for NHRA regional points events. At its peak it attracted competitors from across California's high desert and Owens Valley communities, drawing drivers who might otherwise travel hours to reach a sanctioned track in the Los Angeles basin.
By the time Hot Rod Magazine featured the strip in its final operating years, the facilities remained essentially unchanged from the 1950s. The entirety of the spectator infrastructure consisted of one small bleacher. There was no timing tower and no permanent tower structure of any kind alongside the racing surface. Two outhouses served as the restroom facilities. An old Cadillac ambulance stood by as the safety vehicle. Hot Rod described the experience of attending a meeting at Inyokern as a "time warp" — an authentically preserved version of what drag racing had looked like before commercial investment transformed the sport's major venues into modern facilities. The absence of ornament was complete and apparently deliberate, a consequence not of neglect but of the economics of running a desert club track across half a century without significant capital investment.
During the 2005 season the strip ceased operations. The closure resulted from Federal Aviation Administration regulations governing the use of airport property: the taxiway surfaces on which the strip ran were subject to FAA oversight, and the airport's operators could no longer accommodate the racing programme under the terms of their operating agreements. The strip did not reopen.
At the moment of its closure the Inyokern strip was widely acknowledged as a direct physical link to the sport's founding era. Drag racing as an organised activity developed in the late 1940s and early 1950s on similarly improvised surfaces — dry lake beds, abandoned military airstrips, and repurposed taxiways across the American Southwest — and almost all of those original venues had long since been paved over, converted, or closed. The fact that Inyokern continued operating with its original infrastructure intact made it a historical document as much as a functioning race venue. Its status as the second-oldest continuously operating dragstrip in the country underlined how singular the site had become by the time FAA regulations ended its competitive life.
The airport itself covers 1,640 acres at an elevation of 2,457 feet above mean sea level in the Indian Wells Valley. It is owned by the Indian Wells Valley Airport District and has three asphalt runways, the longest measuring 7,100 feet. Following the drag strip's closure, the airport moved to attract commercial and media use. The Ridgecrest Regional Film Commission marketed runway 28 as a primary filming location. Top Gun: Maverick used a hangar on the site during production; Lexus filmed an advertisement for the IS model titled "Gravity" there; and Saab produced a campaign called "Born from Jets" on the airfield. The airport also has a long soaring history through the Sierra Soaring Club. The motorsport chapter, however, closed definitively in 2005.