Tampa Dragway

Billy Herndon built and ran this strip on the south side of what is now I-4 at Mango Road. Jack Patrick won top eliminator at the first race on October 1, 1961, and the Stickshifters ran NHRA-sanctioned races there in 1962. A longtime local remembered parking under the pine trees on a small hill above the strip. He said the track ended abruptly in a small ramp, and one day a dragster whose chute failed shot across the road at the end. The driver wasn’t hurt, but the car came to rest with dirt packed into its blower. On December 2, 1967, Hayden Proffitt’s Grant SST Rambler Rebel beat Larry Arnold’s “Penetration” Charger two out of three on the 1,200-foot strip, at speeds guessed at 171 mph. In 1972 motorcycle jumper Bob Gill cleared fifteen cars there, a world record at the time. Legal problems closed the track. A Rooms To Go warehouse now stands on the site.