Skip to content

Local figure

Fireball Roberts

Fireball Roberts scored his first victory at Occoneechee Speedway near Hillsborough on August 13, 1950, at age 21, and was one of the prominent racers who regularly competed there.

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 Fireball Roberts. The biography and the dated events on this page provide sources about Fireball Roberts’ life and work.

Fireball Roberts, newspaper photograph, 1964
Fireball Roberts, newspaper photograph, 1964

Life and Orange County connections

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

  1. Fireball Roberts wins his first NASCAR Grand National race at Occoneechee Twenty-one-year-old Fireball Roberts of Daytona Beach won the 100-lap Grand National race at Occoneechee Speedway, his first victory in NASCAR's top series, in only his third start. Curtis Turner led the first 45 laps before a flat tire and finished second; Louise Smith drove a new Nash Ambassador in the field. People: Louise Smith, Curtis TurnerSearch the index · NC State Historic Preservation Office: National Register nomination, Occoneechee Speedway (OR1542, 2002)
  2. 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)
  3. Buck Baker wins the spring 100-lap race at Orange Speedway Buck Baker, driving a 1956 Chrysler, won the 100-lap Grand National race at Orange Speedway on Mother's Day, ahead of Speedy Thompson, Lee Petty, Fireball Roberts and 27 other starters. People: Lee Petty, Fireball RobertsUltimate Racing History: NASCAR Grand National race, Occoneechee Speedway, Hillsboro, NC, May 13, 1956 · Also: The News of Orange County (Hillsborough), March 21, 1957, p. 6
  4. Fireball Roberts wins the fall race at Orange Speedway Fireball Roberts, driving a 1956 Ford, won the 110-lap fall race at Orange Speedway, setting the track record for that distance, with Buck Baker second.Search the index · News of Orange County (DigitalNC): item on the Hillsborough speedway, March 21, 1957, p. 6

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 Fireball Roberts, 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.

Research sources

Resources picked for this person, each with a note on what it holds. For ready-made searches of other catalogs, see Search further.

Records of the time

Collections and databases

  • NC LIVE: prepared search for Fireball Roberts Library card An advanced search of the state’s shared databases already scoped to Orange County’s places and this subject; edit it freely, and sign in through your North Carolina library to read
  • Ancestry Library Edition In the libraryOrange County Public Library Census, birth, death and marriage records, and more, free on the public computers at OCPL libraries

Local help

Search further

Ready-made searches in other catalogs and collections. Results are not checked against this person.

Books about Fireball Roberts

More catalogs that show where copies are

Photographs, papers, and newspapers

Historical records and collections

Searched by name. The catalogs give no dates for this person, so results may include other people with the same name. The historical records searches look for the name as written, so they can turn up 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.

Picture: Fireball Roberts, newspaper photograph, 1964. Public domain. Newspaper photograph, The State (Columbia, S.C.); 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