Road project threatens historic N.C. speedway site

Saturday, Dec. 26, 2009

HILLSBOROUGH -- As a young stock car driver in 1965, Apex resident Gene Hobby had a ball joint fail, dropping the front end into the dirt and rolling his Carolina Blue Dodge 330 sedan over five times.

"It's about like rolling in a 55-gallon drum down the side of a mountain," he said.

Fortunately, it was the year NASCAR began requiring seat belts, and Hobby had tightened his during the national anthem. He escaped with a couple of bruises and a cut on his finger. His friend Frank Craig, though, was 12 years old and spilled his snowcone all over himself.

"I was scared to death," Craig said. "You still owe me a snowcone."

Forty-five-years later, the N.C. Department of Transportation is considering a new road that would bisect the Occoneechee-Orange Speedway, NASCAR's third-ever dirt track. Built in 1948, it's now a natural area that attracts runners, dog-walkers, wild turkeys and dozens of racing preservationists.

"This is sacred ground," said Hobby, 72, touring the speedway on Wednesday. "DOT better not come through here."

Crossing the track is one of three DOT alternatives for routing traffic from N.C. 86 around downtown Hillsborough. All start near its junction with U.S. 70A and run north to U.S. 70 near St. Mary's Road.

Boards oppose options

The speedway route would also pass within 100 feet of the historic house at Ayr Mount, a plantation that turns 200 years old in 2015. Another route would knock out about 20 homes, and the third would pave Poplar Ridge overlooking the Eno River.

The Hillsborough Town Board and the Orange County Board of Commissioners have opposed all three options. The boards prefer other means of relieving congestion along N.C. 86, the town's main north-south corridor, which passes directly through the quaint downtown.

Hillsborough Mayor Tom Stevens calls DOT's alternatives "20th-century solutions for a 21st-century problem." He wants to improve public transit and create multiple routes around downtown with minor realignments of existing roads.

"They've got 100 ways to go around town without coming through here," Hobby said of the speedway.

Vince Rhea, a DOT project planning engineer, said the Federal Highway Administration and the N.C. State Historic Preservation Office will scrutinize the speedway crossing because of its impact on the national landmarks.

"If you've got another alternative that's feasible and prudent, you're going to have a hard time going through a protected property," he said. "They're not likely to do that."

Rhea said the DOT and other state and federal agencies will decide by the end of March whether to proceed with the bypass. Construction would be unlikely to start for at least five years, he said.

Hobby and his partners in the Historic Speedway Group have spent the past two years restoring the track. They've cleared trees that had overgrown the dirt track and rebuilt the ticket booth, flag stand and corrugated metal fence around the grounds.

Craig, now the HSG president, figures they've spent around $70,000 and thousands of volunteer hours on the project.

The Orange Speedway is one of three racetracks on the National Register of Historic Places. The others are the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah.

"God built that," Craig said.

"Can you imagine them putting a bypass through the Salt Flats or Indianapolis?" Hobby added.

The last of a kind

The Occoneechee Speedway was named for the Native American tribe that populated North Carolina's Piedmont until the 17th century. It borrowed a straightaway from an old horse racing track on the site, and is the last remaining speedway from NASCAR's first season, 1949. NASCAR founder Bill France Sr. changed the name to Orange Speedway in 1955.

"Nobody could spell Occoneechee," Craig explained.

A 52-year-old Hillsborough native, Craig said NASCAR king Richard Petty's Plymouth HEMI engine would echo through the town when he raced.

"It'd give you chills," Hobby added.

Hobby recalled spectators who climbed trees for a better view of the track. Once, he said, a car rolled off the track, hit a tree and knocked three people to the ground.

The speedway also tells the story of integration: The ruins of separate bathrooms remain even as Craig told the story of Wendell Scott, the only African-American to win a NASCAR Cup race. "He ran here," Craig said. "He was a self-made man. ... He would sometimes get out of the car and change tires himself."

Hobbled by the washboard ruts that marred the turns on the dirt track, Hobby ended up losing the 1965 race to two-time NASCAR champion Ned Jarrett. He was just happy France had mandated seat belts that year.

Now, Hobby likes to show off a model of his No. 99 Dodge.

"Turn it upside down like it was," Craig urged him. "It turns into No. 66."

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