Osceola Drag Strip (Geneva)

This field was built in 1943 as an auxiliary gunnery field for Sanford Naval Air Station to the west, with four paved 4,100-foot runways and taxiways, and was declared surplus after the war. The earliest record found is a classified ad for a night drag race on April 8, 1961. The Seminole Timing Association (STA), formed in fall 1960, ran the races and gave trophies in every class. Its first daytime race, on Sunday, April 30, 1961, drew over 400 people to watch 70 racers. Bub Klingler won both top and middle eliminator, J. G. Wham took little eliminator and Charlie Cowart won stock eliminator in his ‘61 Chevy. Newspapers often called it Geneva Drag Strip in 1962 and sometimes through 1965. By November 1962 it ran days on the first and third Sundays and nights on the second and fourth Saturdays. Racing was held up in late 1962 and early 1963 until the STA could sign a lease with the Seminole County commissioners. Jay Feener, who went in 1962, remembered driving miles through orange groves to get there and a timing tower perched on four telephone poles. Sonny Hartley recalled races every other Saturday night from about 1961 to 1967, when he was in high school.

On February 5, 1965, Hubert Platt set a factory experimental stock track record of 10.31, beating Phil Bonner’s 10.34. Pete Robinson set a track record of 7.62 in his AA/FD on December 11, 1965. On January 30, 1966, 3,000 fans braved the cold to see 160 entries, including Ronnie Sox, Dickie Harrell, Pete Seaton and Hubert Platt. A pre-Winter National race on Monday and Tuesday, February 21-22, 1966 drew Pee Wee Wallace, Shirl Greer, Steve Bagwell and Bill Jacobson. By 1967 the strip had NHRA sanction, racing on the second and fourth Saturday nights and every fifth Sunday, and the Swedish magazine Start & Strip listed it among 325 U.S. drag strips in 1968. The STA’s lease appears to have run out in 1967 or 1968, and the county didn’t renew it. The old airfield is now the county landfill.