Maryhill

Maryhill was first held in 1955 and is still running today! Over the years it has changed organizers and also been on cancelled for quite some time due to road conditions. On this page I will discuss the first few years when it was organized by the Yakima Valley Sports Car Club and SCCA.

The Yakima Valley Sports Car Club was formed in 1954. This wasn’t the first hillclimb they held. They organized a hillclimb on a radio tower access road, the Umtanum Ridge Hillclimb, outside of Yakima. That hill created some controversy (See Umtanum Ridge Hillclimb page), which led to locating the wonderful location of Maryhill for their future events.

The first event held was June 25 & 26, 1955. The length was set at 2.75 miles and consisted of 26 turns with a climb of 1000 feet. First overall winner was Tom Carstens from Tacoma in a Cad-Allard. Quite a challenge. In 1969 there was talk about the road becoming unsafe as the course surface deteriorated. Several times during the period of YVSCC running the hill the distances were changed. In 1961 the hill was organized by the Northwest Region of SCCA. In June of 1963 the last event was held there, this time under the operations of Oregon Region of SCCA. Pierre Phillips driving a Lotus 20 F/Jr was the last overall winner on the shortened 2.2 mile 23 turn course. Unfortunately the hillclimb was abandoned for a while, as money to repave wasn’t available.

**I received a great deal of information on this climb from the two books “Long Straights and Hairpin Turns” and “Weekends of Glory’ both by Martin Rudow. Both books contain the fascinating history of sports car racing in the Pacific Northwest from 1950-1970. Thanks to Martin Rudow for allowing the use of some of the photos in the books also.

1957 & 1963 Booklets

History of the road

Maryhill Loops Road is located near Goldendale in south-central Washington just off of SR14. It was the state’s first asphalt paved road. From 1908-1913, Sam Hill constructed the 3.6 mile winding road on his own property as an experimental road to test different asphalt surfaces. In total he built over 10 miles of road, only the Loops road remains though. Until Hwy 97 was completed in the 1920s this was the main road in that part of the state.