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Local figure

Lee Petty

Lee Petty of Greensboro won the 200-mile race at Occoneechee Speedway near Hillsborough on October 29, 1950, and raced at the track through the 1950s and 1960s, as did his son Richard Petty.

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 Lee Petty. The biography and the dated events on this page provide sources about Lee Petty’s life and work.

Lee Petty, newspaper photograph, 1950
Lee Petty, newspaper photograph, 1950

Life and Orange County connections

Dated events connected with this person, earliest first. See these 4 dated events in the chronology →

  1. Lee Petty wins the 1950 season finale as Bill Rexford clinches the title Lee Petty of Greensboro won the 200-mile race that closed NASCAR's 1950 Grand National season at Occoneechee Speedway, his first win at the track. Bill Rexford dropped out with engine trouble but took the championship when Fireball Roberts also failed to finish. People: Fireball RobertsSearch the index · NC State Historic Preservation Office: National Register nomination, Occoneechee Speedway (OR1542, 2002)
  2. Buck Baker wins the spring 100-miler at Orange Speedway Buck Baker, driving a 1956 Chrysler, beat Lee Petty, Fireball Roberts and 29 other drivers in the 100-mile Grand National race at Orange Speedway on Mother's Day. People: Lee Petty, Fireball RobertsNews of Orange County (DigitalNC): item on the Hillsborough speedway, March 21, 1957, p. 6
  3. 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. People: Richard PettySearch the index · NC DNCR, Moonshine and Motorsports Trail: Occoneechee Speedway
  4. 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. People: Lee PettySearch the index · NC DNCR, Moonshine and Motorsports Trail: Occoneechee Speedway

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 Lee Petty, 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.

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.

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Books about Lee Petty

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Photographs, papers, and newspapers

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Research sources

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Picture: Lee Petty, newspaper photograph, 1950. No known copyright restrictions. State Archives of North Carolina, General Negative Collection; via Flickr Commons

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