Tropical Park Race Track

Tropical Park Race Track was a horse racing facility built on 245acre at the current intersection of Bird Road and the Palmetto Expressway in metropolitan Miami, Florida, in what is now Olympia Heights. The race track was built by Bill Dwyer, a prohibition era bootlegger, and Frank Bruen with backing from Canadian distilling tycoon, Samuel Bronfman. It opened on December 26, 1931, and closed in 1972. The track hosted meets for both for Thoroughbred and Standardbred horses.Tropical Park introduced the first synthetic racetrack surface for horse racing in the 1966-67 season. Known as "Tartan Turf, " it was a rubberized surface manufactured by the 3M company. Built inside the regular dirt track, one race per day was contested on the Tartan track but for safety reasons the majority of horse trainers and owners refused to run their horses on the track.