What to See in Knoxville - Top Sights and Attractions

Car racing track in Knoxville, Iowa. Knoxville Raceway is a semi-banked 1/2 mile dirt oval raceway located at the Marion County Fairgrounds in Knoxville, Iowa, United States. Races at the "Sprint Car Capital of the World" are held on Saturday nights from April through September each year. Some special events such as the Knoxville Nationals, 360 Knoxville Nationals and Late Model Knoxville Nationals are multi-day events. Weekly racing events at the track features multiple classes of sprint cars including 410 cubic inch, 360 cubic inch and Pro Sprints. Each August, the Raceway holds the paramount sprint car event in the United States, the Knoxville Nationals. The track is governed by the 24-member fair board elected by Marion County residents.^[1]

The National Sprint Car Hall of Fame & Museum is a Hall of Fame and museum for sprint car drivers, owners, mechanics, builders, manufacturers, promoters, sanctioning officials and media members. The museum is located in Knoxville, Iowa, the home of the Knoxville Nationals at Knoxville Raceway.

The National Sprint Car Hall of Fame & Museum Foundation, Inc. is a 501 non-profit organization incorporated in the state of Iowa on April 25, 1986, for the sole purpose of preserving the history of the sport of sprint car racing and honoring its greatest achievers. The $1.7-million facility, located on the Marion County Fairgrounds in Knoxville, officially opened on January 4, 1992.

The first floor of the four-story structure features the Donald Lamberti National Sprint Car Museum, a museum store and the administrative offices. The museum currently has twenty-five restored ‘big cars’, supermodifieds and sprint cars on loan. The 8,000-square-foot exhibit space also contains displays of trophies, paintings, photos, plaques, helmets and other memorabilia of the sport of sprint car racing.

The National Sprint Car Hall of Fame honors outstanding achievers in the sport of ‘big car’ and sprint car racing, including those in the driver, owner/mechanic and promoter/sanctioning official/media member categories. The entire nomination and election process is carried out by the 72-member National Induction Committee, which consists of media members, historians and representatives of the major oldtimers organizations from across the United States.

The facility also include a library and research center, a 40-seat theater, a catering kitchen, an administrative office, a conference and banquet facility, and a 150-seat clubhouse for race-viewing on individual nights.

The Bryan Clauson Suite Tower opened in 2018 and is a five story suite complex that sits adjacent to the current museum suites to the west. This five-story suite tower houses 4 suites on each of the top three stories, for a total of 12 new suites, with an observation deck on the Bryan Clauson Suite Tower roof, reserved for the suite-holders of this building.^[2]

Building. The E.R. Hays House, also known as Bybee & Davis Funeral Home, is a historic building located in Knoxville, Iowa, United States. Hays was a local lawyer who served briefly in the United States House of Representatives, replacing Edwin H. Conger who resigned to become the United States Ambassador to Brazil. Hays died a year after the house was completed. The family continued to live here until 1935 when it became the Bybee & Davis Funeral Home. The 2½-story brick structure was designed by the Des Moines architectural firm of Foster & Liebbe in a combination of the Late Victorian and Italianate styles. Victorian eclecticism is featured in the porch and the trimwork, while the Italianate is found in the building's massing. The house was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1984.^[4]