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<br />NP3 Form 10 -9ao•a
<br />OMB Approval No. 1024 -0018
<br />18-88)
<br />United States Department of the Interior
<br />National Park Service
<br />National Register of historic Places
<br />Continuation Sheet
<br />Occoneechee Speedway
<br />Orange County, N.C.
<br />Section number 8 Page 18
<br />Secretary of State's office, the principals, Bill France, Ben Lowe of Burlington, Dobe Powell and
<br />Enoch Staley of North Wilkesboro and Joe Buck Dawson of Chapel Hill, announced a plan to
<br />build a one -mile oval racetrack with a 5,000 -seat capacity. 46 The Occoneechee Speedway was to
<br />be the third one -mile oval track on the east coast; the other two were in Atlanta and Langhorne,
<br />Pennsylvania. 47 In December 1947, three months after the announcement to build the track
<br />outside Hillsborough, Bill France Sr. convened a group of racing promoters from across the
<br />Southeast at the Streamline Hotel in Daytona Beach where they formed NASCAR (National
<br />Association for Stock Car Automobile Racing). The organization was incorporated on February
<br />21,1948 . 48 The first NASCAR race was held on the beaches of Daytona in February 1948.49
<br />The Occoneechee Speedway opened on June 27, 1948 with a one hundred mile NASCAR race.
<br />The event attracted an estimated 20,000 fans. The facility offered one hundred acres of parking,
<br />wooden grandstands for 10,000 spectators and sloped hillsides for 25,000 additional fans. Fonty
<br />Flock, a member of one of racing's most prominent families, won the first race at
<br />Occoneechee. 50 The second and third races at Occoneechee were a scheduled double- header,
<br />anticipated by a local newspaper to be, "the greatest ever held in the State." The double- header
<br />took place on September 19, 1948 with Fonty Flock winning both events.5 t
<br />On August 7, 1949, Occoneechee hosted a "Strictly Stock" division race in which street -
<br />approved cars competed. The NASCAR sanctioned race was the third of that division and only
<br />one of eight Strictly Stock races ever held before the division's name was changed. Two other
<br />Strictly. Stock races were held in Charlotte and North Wilkesboro that year. Over seventeen
<br />thousand fans attended the August 7 race, an event fraught with wrecks that devastated many of
<br />reverted to "Hillsborough," which had been the original spelling when the town was renamed from Childsburg to
<br />Hillsborough in 1766. Throughout this nomination, the current official spelling will be used.
<br />46 Three of the original principals eventually sold their interests in the track to France and Staley who remained
<br />associated with the corporation throughout its history.
<br />47 The News of Orange County, September 25, 1947; at the time it opened, Occoneechee Speedway was measured at
<br />one mile. In 1956, it was remeasured at 0.9 miles.
<br />48 Peter Golenbock, American Zoom: Stock Car Racing From Dirt Tracks to Daytona (New York: Macmillan
<br />Publishing, 1993), 72.
<br />49 Angelique S. Chengelis, "Take a Ride Down Memory Lane: NASCAR's First 50 Years," The Detroit News (on-
<br />line version), June 11, 1998 < http• / /detnews.coin /1998 /motosports /9806/11/06150013.htm >(July 9, 2001).
<br />50 Ed Sanseverino, "Occoneechee- Orange Speedway, Hillsboro, North Carolina," Booklet (by the Author, 1995), 1.
<br />51 The News of Orange, September 16, 1948.
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