Driving a motor vehicle into a swamp generally sounds like a recipe for disaster, unless the vehicle in question is a swamp buggy. Outfitted with balloon tires and gun racks, swamp buggies originated in the 1930s as a mode of hunting in Naples’ otherwise impenetrable bogs. Years later, buggy owners started an off-season tradition to complement their hunting: swamp-buggy racing. For more than 60 years, Swamp Buggy Races has kept the tradition alive, growing from informal competitions held in muddy potato patches to a thrice-yearly event at Florida Sports Park. Drivers zoom around a track dubbed the Mile O’ Mud, dotted with sinkhole-like “sippy holes” that can only be traversed with sufficient horsepower or with help from a chivalrous man willing to lay down his sturdy coat. As buggies whir past, fans cheer on their favorite buggy from grandstand-style seats and delight in the race’s finale, the Swamp Buggy Queen’s Annual Mudbath, in which the year’s beauty pageant queen is dunked in the track’s sloppiest segment.