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NIPS Form 10.900 -a OMB Approval No. 1024 -0018 (8.86 United States Department .of the Interior National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Continuation Sheet Occoneechee Speedway Orange County, N.C. Section number 8 Page 11 59 venues hosting races during that first season. The first race at Occoneechee took place on June 27, 1948; a double- header race was staged in September of that year at the Hillsborough track. 12 In 1949, the Strictly Stock division had its first race. Because of post -war demand for new cars, France initially felt that people who were on long waiting lists for their own automobiles would not want to see new cars being banged and beaten on the short dirt tracks. The inauguration was delayed until 1949 when France heard rumors that a rival promoter was organizing a similar stock car association. The first official Strictly Stock race was held on June 19, 1949 at the original Charlotte Motor Speedway, which was located on Wilkinson Boulevard near the present -day intersection of Little Rock Road and I -85. The track was described as "a rough three - quarter mile dirt track surrounded by scraggly fences of undressed lumber." Fans flocked to the race to see drivers competing for $5,000 in prize money in cars like those they owned or could own. 13 Eight tracks were on the first Strictly Stock schedule in 1949: Charlotte Motor Speedway; Martinsville Speedway in Martinsville, Virginia; Occoneechee Speedway; Daytona Beach Road Course; Heidelberg Speedway in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; North Wilkesboro Speedway in North Wilkesboro, North Carolina and tracks in Langhorne, Pennsylvania and Hamburg, New York. All of these tracks were dirt. By the end of the 1949 season, the success of the Strictly Stock division made it the premier class of NASCAR.14 In 1950, the name of the Strictly Stock division was changed to the Grand National Circuit reflecting its elite status in the world of stock car racing. Also in 1950, peanut farmer Harold Brasington hosted a NASCAR Grand National race on his newly completed, paved, mile- and -a- quarter superspeedway in Darlington, South Carolina. An estimated 20,000 people watched the 500 -mile race which had a purse of $25,500, the largest ever in a stock car event. When Darlington opened, it was NASCAR's only completely paved track and was the first southern speedway, but Smokey Yunick, one of NASCAR's legendary mechanics, described the track as a poor facility, "run by a bunch of farmers" with only one toilet, one spigot for drinking water and one telephone. 15 The final race of the 1950 season and the one that would determine the overall 12 The other North Carolina towns hosting races were Greensboro, North Wilkesboro, Wadesboro, Lexington, Charlotte, Elkin and Winston - Salem, Fielden, Forty Years of Stock Car Racing, Volume 1, 48. 13 Fielden, Forty Years of Stock Car Racing, Volume 1, 7." McLaughlin, "In the Beginning...." 14 Fielden, Forty Years of Stock Car Racing, Volume 1, 9, 15 Daniel, 99.