Pioneers back track's restoration

Friday, Aug. 28, 2009

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. - Some of NASCAR's pioneers, who turned dusty ovals into a multibillion-dollar car racing industry, will take some laps in Hillsborough this weekend at the annual fund-raising event for the restoration of the historic Occoneechee Speedway.

''We're expecting a big event," said Joe Crews, vice president of the Historic Speedway Group and one of its four founding members three years ago. "I'm hoping we get 20,000 people or more."

What those racing enthusiasts can hope to see are some of the men who put the pedal to the metal in the sport's formative years, folks like Archie Smith, who can properly lay claim to being the reigning granddaddy of NASCAR.

''He drove in the very first NASCAR race in September of 1949, and he finished sixth in Charlotte," Crews said. "He also raced at this track here at Occoneechee."

''He said NASCAR called him. They told him the other day that he is the sole survivor of the first NASCAR race."

Smith will be riding Saturday with Billy Biscoe, another early NASCAR driver who formerly worked in Richard Petty's pit crew. The racing pioneers are from Denton, Davidson County, population 1,450. Biscoe will be driving a car he built for Ralph Earnhardt, the father of Dale Earnhardt, according to Crews.

Rex White, the 1960 NASCAR champion who is "the oldest living NASCAR champion right now," according to Crews, is expected to be at Saturday's event, as is 1961 Daytona 500 champion Marvin Panch, The late Wendell Scott, the sport's first black driver, will be represented by his daughter, Sybil, of Danville, Va., and there will be "just a lot of drivers who never really got famous," Crews said. "We usually have between 60 and 75 drivers."

NASCAR Hall of Fame inductee Cotton Owens will be in the field with other legends driving their vintage race cars, which were used in the early days of NASCAR.

Gene Hobby, who is remembered for one of the most spectacular crashes at Occoneechee and in NASCAR history, "will be honored for his contribution as an independent driver, to help make the history of the sport," said Frank Craig, president of the now 60-member Historic Speedway Group that is charged with restoring the original track.

The group is attempting to make the track look "exactly as it was, with everything in the same place," Craig said.

So far the group has succeeded in restoring the original ticket office and fence while grading the race track. The concession stand is next on the agenda.

Funding for the project consists almost entirely of private donations, although the group does receive a small grant from the Hillsborough Tourism Board.

Occoneechee remains one of only three race tracks on the National Register of Historic Places, and it is the only dirt track left. The speedway was the third NASCAR race track created, and, in a bizarre twist, it gave rise to the fame that Talladega Superspeedway in Alabama has achieved.

Twenty years after the Occoneechee Speedway was created from a horse racing track, the owners of NASCAR were involved in a dispute with religious leaders, who were opposed to having races on Sundays. So, as the story goes, in 1969 the owners decided to move the races that were held here to Eastaboga, Ala., where the abandoned Anniston Army Airfield was transformed into Talladega.

But during its two decades, Occoneechee was one of the most popular tracks on the circuit, because "it was the fastest and largest dirt track," Craig said.

Its location, in the middle of the state with a "concentration of urban customers and open spaces out in the Piedmont," was also ideal, said Harry Watson, director of the UNC Center for the Study of the American South.

NASCAR's charm "evolved out of running moonshine," Watson said. The bootleggers "had to get their products from the stills to the distributors" while evading the police. To do this they employed drivers who used modified cars, combining a great deal of speed with the driving skills of the runners.

''The moonshiners became so skilled they wanted to race each other," Watson said.

But after World War II North Carolina began to permit the sale and consumption of alcohol, and the track became the legal route for many of the bootleggers to go.

After 1968 the Occoneechee track was abandoned, quietly fading into obscurity. In 1987 trails were made around the former speedway infield, which had turned into a raw patch of unkempt trees and vegetation. But it still remained a deserted area for the most part until three years ago, when the Historic Speedway Group took over and began its efforts to recreate the allure that was once Occoneechee.

The events, which begin today, are free to the public and "will have plenty of food and ice cream," Craig said. "I hope everyone can come out."

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.

Disclaimer