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Local figure

Bill France Sr.

Bill France Sr., the Daytona Beach promoter who organized NASCAR, and four partners chartered Hillsboro Speedway, Inc. in September 1947 to build Occoneechee Speedway outside Hillsborough. He was president of Orange Speedway, Inc., formed in 1952, and in 1958 leased the grounds to the Orange County Board of Education for high school athletics.

Source: NC State Historic Preservation Office: National Register nomination, Occoneechee Speedway (OR1542, 2002)

Orange County Indexed has not yet linked an indexed work directly to Bill France Sr. The biography and the dated events on this page provide sources about Bill France Sr.’s life and work.

Search works on Occoneechee Speedway, Hillsborough Research sources View background reading ↓
Bill France Sr., newspaper photograph, 1949
Bill France Sr., newspaper photograph, 1949

Life and Orange County connections

Dated events connected with this person, earliest first. See these 7 dated events in the chronology →

  1. Hillsboro Speedway, Inc. buys the Occoneechee Farm racetrack tract W. S. Murchison and J. R. Rogers sold two hundred acres of the old Occoneechee Farm, including its horse track, to Hillsboro Speedway, Inc., the company Bill France and four partners had chartered to build a stock car track. France had spotted the track while flying over Orange County.Search the index · NC State Historic Preservation Office: National Register nomination, Occoneechee Speedway (OR1542, 2002)
  2. Occoneechee Speedway opens Occoneechee Speedway, a one-mile dirt oval that Bill France and four North Carolina partners built on the old Occoneechee Farm horse track outside Hillsborough, opened with a 100-mile NASCAR stock car race won by Fonty Flock. People: Bill France Sr.The News of Orange County (DigitalNC): Speedway Opening Is Declared Successful, July 1, 1948
  3. NASCAR comes to Occoneechee Speedway Occoneechee Speedway near Hillsborough hosted the third race of NASCAR's first Strictly Stock season, a 200-lap event won by Bob Flock. It is the only dirt track from that inaugural season that still survives. People: Bill France Sr.The News of Orange County (DigitalNC): 40 New Model Cars To Race At Occoneechee, August 4, 1949
  4. Orange Speedway, Inc. takes over the Hillsborough track Bill France Sr. became president of the new Orange Speedway, Inc., with Ann France as secretary-treasurer and Enoch Staley as vice-president; the other three original partners were no longer with the track. It was known as Orange Speedway from 1954. People: Enoch StaleySearch the index · NC State Historic Preservation Office: National Register nomination, Occoneechee Speedway (OR1542, 2002)
  5. A quarter-mile track opens inside Orange Speedway A new quarter-mile track built inside the Orange Speedway mile opened with a seven-event NASCAR sportsman and amateur racing program under the direction of Bill France and Enoch Staley. People: Bill France Sr.Search the index · News of Orange County (DigitalNC): New quarter mile track opens Sunday for NASCAR races here, July 14, 1955, p. 8
  6. Bill France leases Orange Speedway to the Orange County Board of Education Bill France signed a ten-year lease letting Hillsboro High School use the Orange Speedway grounds as its athletic field, for $100 a year, while races continued. People: Enoch StaleySearch the index · News of Orange County (DigitalNC): Lease for speedway for high school use, September 18, 1958, p. 1
  7. Orange Speedway, Inc. is dissolved The three shareholders of Orange Speedway, Inc., Ann and Bill France and Enoch Staley, voluntarily dissolved the corporation sixteen years after the last race. France Staley, LLC, which held title to the track, sold it to Preservation North Carolina in 1997. People: Enoch StaleySearch the index · NC State Historic Preservation Office: National Register nomination, Occoneechee Speedway (OR1542, 2002)

Places in this person’s story

Buildings, schools, churches and other sites named in the dated events on this page, the most often named first. The map shows them all.

Map tiles © OpenStreetMap contributors. Site locations from the N.C. State Historic Preservation Office survey, Open Orange and OpenStreetMap; town and community pins mark the middle of their mapped buildings.

All places and the county map →

Named with them in the chronology

People named in the same dated entries as Bill France Sr., those sharing the most entries first. Each line links one of the shared entries in the chronology, where its source is cited. A shared entry shows these people in the same event, not how well they knew each other.

Background on Occoneechee Speedway, Hillsborough

These works give background on Occoneechee Speedway, Hillsborough, the wider story this person is part of. Each links to the institution that holds or provides it.

Occoneechee-Orange Speedway

Sanseverino, Edward P. · 1995

Edward P. Sanseverino's 1995 account of the Occoneechee-Orange Speedway, the stock car track outside Hillsborough that ran in the middle decades of the twentieth century. Topics include automobile racing and racetracks in North Carolina and Hillsborough in the twentieth century.

✓ Held at OCPL · NC 796.72 SAN

Jock Lauterer photographic collection, circa 1964-1968.

Lauterer, Jock · 1964

Photographs made by Jock Lauterer in and around Chapel Hill from about 1964 to 1968, some 3,522 items in the North Carolina Collection at UNC. Subjects include the Speaker Ban Law, Ku Klux Klan activity in North Carolina, Tar Heel basketball and football, the Jubilee festival, the Old Well, and visitors including Lyndon Johnson, Hubert Humphrey, Bob Hope and Jayne Mansfield.

UNC

Occoneechee Speedway/Orange Speedway (Chapel Hill Historical Society vertical file)

Clippings and promotional materials on the Occoneechee Speedway near Hillsborough, the dirt racetrack later renamed Orange Speedway. An undated folder from box 31 of the Chapel Hill Historical Society's Vertical File Collection, Carrboro and Orange County series.

CH Historical Society

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Picture: Bill France Sr., newspaper photograph, 1949. Public domain. Twin City Sentinel, 1949; via Wikimedia Commons

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