Chronology

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1. Civil rights era · 1945–1975

2. May 1960
   Competition or sporting achievement · Orange Speedway (Occoneechee Speedway), Hillsborough Lee Petty wins at Orange Speedway from the front row beside his son Richard

   Lee Petty, 46, led all 110 laps to win the May race at Orange Speedway. His son Richard Petty had the pole, the first time the father and son started together on the front row.

3. September 1960
   Competition or sporting achievement · Orange Speedway (Occoneechee Speedway), Hillsborough Richard Petty wins his first race at Orange Speedway

   Richard Petty, 23, took the pole and led all 110 laps of the September 100-mile race at Orange Speedway, finishing a lap ahead of Ned Jarrett. His father Lee had won the track's May race.

4. 1967
   Competition or sporting achievement · Orange Speedway (Occoneechee Speedway), Hillsborough Richard Petty wins the Hillsborough 150 during his ten-race streak

   Richard Petty's win in the Hillsborough 150 at Orange Speedway was the eighth of ten straight victories in 1967, the season he won a record 27 races.

5. September 15, 1968
   Closing or ending · Hillsborough Final race at Orange Speedway

   Richard Petty won by seven laps in the last NASCAR Grand National race at Orange Speedway near Hillsborough, as the Occoneechee track had been called since 1954. The track closed after the race.

6. Recent decades · 1976–2026

7. December 11, 1992
   Award or honor · Level Cross Richard Petty receives the Presidential Medal of Freedom

   President George H. W. Bush presented Petty the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his stock car racing career, citing his rise from humble beginnings in Level Cross, North Carolina.

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A dated event is a fact, filed on the page of the subject it belongs to: a person, a place, a theme, or a named event or history. Pages are subjects, with their own works and sources; the Place, community, or institution filter also gathers the institutions that recur in the entries without a page of their own. The page opens on the highlights; a search or any filter looks through every dated event and storyline, and each filter’s counts say how many entries choosing it would show alongside the others. A storyline is a longer history that gathers related dated events, and each storyline’s page lists its own. Counts give dated events and storylines separately. Dates come from the sources named on the cards and from the index’s event pages; where sources disagree, the card follows the county records. Entries marked approximate or needing research say so on the card; the rest were checked against the source named on it. The correction link under the entries opens the contact form; name the entry and its date and the Friends will check the source. Suggest an event →

Compiled and maintained by the Friends of the Orange County Public Library from county records, the sources named on each card, and the index’s event pages. Last updated October 1, 2026.