Golden Triangle Drag Strip/Twin City Dragway (Oldsmar)

This track was in a rural, swampy part of northwest Hillsborough County near Oldsmar. Jim Kaylor, one of the original owners, talked a farmer into letting him put a drag strip in the middle of his cow pasture, and started it with partners Joe Livesay and Charles Diez, Jr. They hoped to open by December 10 but held the first race on January 1, 1959, when Ed Pantley won top eliminator at 131.68 mph in his Chevy-powered B dragster. Pantley won often that first year. The track couldn’t open the next Sunday because it was being resurfaced, maybe a sign of the swampy ground, or maybe they were lengthening the paved part of the mile-long strip, 2,800 feet of which was paved. The official grand opening was January 18, 1959, with more than 140 cars. The Blockbusters car club of Clearwater ran the races, and the strip was banked on both sides so spectators could look down on the track. Just before Easter it closed for seven more weeks of resurfacing.

On May 24, the day it reopened, William Frazier of Sebring lost control of his B dragster after a 142 mph run and was killed when it overturned at the end of the track. Tech officials had judged his front end unsafe but gave in to his complaints and let him run. Afterward the strip limited dragsters to an eighth mile. A starting line flagger recalled probably two deaths at the track. The other was a teenage girl, killed in 1964 when Jan Ruble’s dragster crashed through a fence into a parked car. At a two-day Labor Day race in 1959, Ed Garlits had top speed of 114 mph on the first day but a blown clutch kept him out of eliminations, and Ed Pantley won in his A dragster.

Don Garlits raced here because it was close to home, not because he especially liked it, and he used it for testing in the 1960s. Driving for Garlits, Art Malone set an eighth-mile world record of 139.36 mph and 5.43 seconds on November 1, 1959, and raised it to 142.85 mph two months later at the Florida Mid-Winter Championships. On February 7, 1960, Malone beat Chris Karamesines in a match race and Ed Garlits beat Connie Kalitta for top eliminator. In 1961 Don Garlits’s engine blew during a 185 mph run here, burning his face and hands. On July 15, 1961 the strip started Saturday night racing, and for several years it was the only night drag strip on Florida’s west coast.

Leroy Gonzalez took over in 1964 and spent money on repairs and improvements, including a new two-story timing tower and paved pits and entrance roads. He ran it first under AHRA, though NASCAR sanctioned special points meets in 1965 and 1966. Bob Scadron was running it in 1970, under NAAR sanction through at least 1975. Some sources say it ran through 1978, but newspapers don’t confirm that, and when it closed isn’t known.