Golden Triangle Drag Strip (Beaumont)

This strip is said to have started as an old airplane landing strip north of Nederland. The entrance was on Highway 347, across from the north gate of the Du Pont refinery. Old-timers remember a bumpy track with a short shutdown area and dusty pits. In 1961 the strip record of 148 MPH belonged to Kent Chatagnier of Port Arthur in his Ray’s Spring Special fuel dragster. That year Chatagnier also held the world record for a Pontiac-powered dragster at 201.78 MPH and 8.412 seconds. A photo spread in the Port Neches Chronicle on December 14, 1961, shows the strip running that year. In the mid-1960s the track booked match racers and wheelstanders such as Bill Golden’s “Little Red Wagon.”

By 1967, and maybe earlier, the Beaumont Drag Strip was NHRA sanctioned and ran on the first and third Sundays, with Dick Potter as manager. In 1968 Mr. and Mrs. Russell McCready of Port Arthur ran it as a non-profit, open only on Friday nights, and anyone could race for 50 cents. By 1973 the schedule included Wednesday and Saturday nights and Sundays. The surface was improved for 1975, with grudge racing on Saturdays and regular racing on Sundays. Richard Potter owned the track in 1976 and let the Port Arthur Cajun Festival hold its event there May 27-30 that year. Pro golfer Bruce Lietzke raced there as a teenager. He later called it a small-scale strip that was a big deal to him, and said he spent every Saturday night of high school there. Nothing has been found about the strip after 1976.