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Local figure

Curtis Turner

Curtis Turner won Grand National races at the Hillsborough dirt track in August 1953 and March 1959, after finishing second to Fireball Roberts there in August 1950, and ran the final Cup race of his career in the 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 Curtis Turner. The biography and the dated events on this page provide sources about Curtis Turner’s life and work.

Search works on Occoneechee Speedway, Hillsborough Research sources View background reading ↓
Curtis Turner, newspaper photograph, 1949
Curtis Turner, newspaper photograph, 1949

Life and Orange County connections

Dated events connected with this person, earliest first. See these 3 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. Curtis Turner wins both NASCAR convertible races at Orange Speedway Curtis Turner of Roanoke won both NASCAR convertible circuit races held at Orange Speedway in 1956 and set the convertible qualifying record there.Search the index · News of Orange County (DigitalNC): item on the Hillsborough speedway, March 21, 1957, p. 6
  3. 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)

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.

✓ 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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Books about Curtis Turner

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Photographs, papers, and newspapers

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Research sources

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Picture: Curtis Turner, newspaper photograph, 1949. Public domain. Newspaper photograph; via Wikimedia Commons

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