Named event or history
NASCAR’s early dirt track on the Eno, 1949–1968; not the Orange County Speedway in Rougemont.
In briefBill France and four partners chartered a company in September 1947 to build a one-mile dirt oval by the old Occoneechee Farm, and it opened in June 1948. The track held a race in NASCAR's first Strictly Stock season in 1949, was renamed Orange Speedway in 1954, and closed after Richard Petty won its last race on September 15, 1968.
3 indexed works are connected with this event. 1 held at OCPL →
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Related works found in catalogs and archives across North Carolina. Each links to the institution that holds or provides it.
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.
Why this is here: Its title names this subject.
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.
Why this is here: The record names this subject alongside a heading for the county or its towns.
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.
Why this is here: Its title names this subject.
Dated events connected with this event: sixteen of 34, the highlights and a sample of the rest spread across the years, in date order. See all 34 dated events in the chronology →
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.
Subject: Occoneechee Speedway · Occoneechee Farm
Fonty Flock, who had won the speedway's opening race in June, won both feature events of the double-header at Occoneechee Speedway, the track's second and third races.
Subject: Occoneechee Speedway
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 Turner
Subject: Occoneechee Speedway
Fonty Flock won the spring NASCAR Grand National race at Occoneechee Speedway, with Frank Mundy second and Bill Blair third.
Subject: Occoneechee Speedway
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 Staley
Subject: Occoneechee Speedway
Curtis Turner of Roanoke won both NASCAR convertible circuit races held at Orange Speedway in 1956 and set the convertible qualifying record there.
Subject: Occoneechee 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 Roberts
Subject: Occoneechee Speedway
After protests by the Rev. C. H. Reckard and other Orange County clergy, the legislature passed a law on May 8, 1957 banning racing on Sundays, though Sunday races were being advertised again at Orange Speedway by 1961.
Subject: Occoneechee Speedway
A film company shot scenes for a television drama starring James Whitmore at Orange Speedway and the Colonial Inn in Hillsborough. Speedway co-owner Enoch Staley brought in several well-known drivers, among them Buck Baker, for close-up scenes.
Subject: Occoneechee Speedway · Colonial Inn
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 Petty
Subject: Occoneechee Speedway
Junior Johnson won the spring 150-mile Grand National race at Orange Speedway in March 1963.
Subject: Occoneechee Speedway
Orange Speedway scheduled its spring 1964 150-mile Grand National race as the inaugural Joe Weatherly Memorial, honoring the late national champion who held both track speed records and had won his last race there.
Subject: Occoneechee 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 Turner
Subject: Occoneechee Speedway
Richard Jenrette founded the Classical American Homes Preservation Trust with his gift of Ayr Mount, which became the first of his houses opened to the public. The trust, later renamed the Richard Hampton Jenrette Foundation, came to own land around Ayr Mount including Poet's Walk and the Occoneechee Speedway site.
Subject: Ayr Mount · Occoneechee Speedway
Hillsborough's historic preservation commission approved the nomination, but the mayor objected after a vote of the town commissioners, because the old track lay in the path of a possible north-south bypass. Commissioner Ken Chavious asked the committee on February 14, 2002 to weigh the town's traffic needs. Members replied that only eligibility was before them and approved the nomination unanimously, with one member leaving the room because he consulted on the bypass.
Subject: Occoneechee Speedway
North Carolina finalized the addition of more than 200 acres near Hillsborough, including the Historic Occoneechee Speedway trail and the James M. Johnston Nature Preserve, to Eno River State Park. The Eno River Association had arranged the sale from the Jenrette Foundation, formerly the Classical American Homes Preservation Trust.
Part of Saving the Eno · 6 events
Subject: Occoneechee Speedway · Eno River State Park
Buildings, schools, churches and other sites named in the dated events on this page, the most often named first. The map shows the 6 with a known location.
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.
Background from selected state and local sources
Maps, surveys, and the ground itself
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Other catalogs to search and local organizations that can help.
Picture: The Occoneechee Speedway, Hillsborough. CC BY 2.0. Photograph by bobistraveling; via Wikimedia Commons
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