Skip to content

Local figure

Richard Petty

Richard Petty won the September 1960 race at Orange Speedway near Hillsborough, leading all 110 laps, won the Hillsborough 150 during his ten-race winning streak of 1967, and won the dirt track's last race in September 1968.

Source: NC DNCR, Moonshine and Motorsports Trail: Occoneechee Speedway

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

Richard Petty, photograph, 1973
Richard Petty, photograph, 1973

Life and Orange County connections

Dated events connected with this person, earliest first. See these 5 dated events in the chronology →

  1. 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
  2. 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
  3. 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.Search the index · NC DNCR, Moonshine and Motorsports Trail: Occoneechee Speedway
  4. 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. People: Richard Petty, Curtis TurnerNC State Historic Preservation Office: National Register nomination, Occoneechee Speedway (listed 2002)
  5. 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. People: George BushSearch the index · GovInfo, Public Papers of the Presidents: Remarks on Presenting the Presidential Medals of Freedom, December 11, 1992

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 →

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.

Search further

Search other library catalogs and digital collections for more about Richard Petty.

Books about Richard Petty

More catalogs that show where copies are

Photographs, papers, and newspapers

Searched by name. The catalogs give no dates for this person, so results may include other people with the same name. Each link opens that catalog’s own results in a new tab. The Friends have not reviewed what they return.

Found a book OCPL doesn’t own? You can often borrow it through interlibrary loan at OCPL.

Research sources

Additional research sources

Other catalogs to search and local organizations that can help.

Picture: Richard Petty, photograph, 1973. No known copyright restrictions. State Archives of North Carolina, General Negative Collection; via Wikimedia Commons

More to discover

Keep Reading Local

The Friends connect people with new library materials, local writers and publishers, and resources documenting Orange County.

Two mice reading back to back against a leaf, with the hand-lettered words Friends of the Orange County Public Library
Illustration by Caldecott Medalist Matthew Cordell, gifted to the Friends 2026