Location: Old US 421 (Speedway Road) at US 421 southeast of North Wilkesboro
County: Wilkes
Original Date Cast: 2007
Stock car racing fans and scholars acknowledge that the roots of the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing (NASCAR) are closely tied to the tradition of illegal moonshine production. Races between “runners” evolved into spectator events. In 1947 promoter Bill France, Sr. and others met in North Wilkesboro to draft plans to establish NASCAR. Local racing enthusiast Enoch Staley developed the track along with investors Charlie Combs and John Mastin. They partnered with other race fans, purchased farmland, and began construction of an oval track. Due to funding shortfalls, construction resulted in an undulating, asymmetrical, 5/8-mile oval that challenged the best of drivers.
Completed in 1946, the venue was hailed as one of the fastest dirt tracks. The first official race, won by Fonty Flock, took place on May 18, 1947, with 10,000 spectators. North Wilkesboro was among the first tracks recognized by NASCAR during its inaugural year of 1949. (The track at Charlotte hosted the first sanctioned race that season.) The season’s finale, including the crowning of the first points champion, Red Byron, took place on October 16, 1949, at North Wilkesboro. Staley paved the track in 1957 following the lead of Martinsville owners.
Although built by Staley and Combs, the speedway has often been referred to as “The House that Junior Built,” referring to racing legend Junior Johnson who began his career at age sixteen at North Wilkesboro in a “liquor car” in an unofficial bootleggers’ race in 1947. As Johnson stated, “All the cars at that time were liquor cars.” He remembered tearing up the track making it “rougher than a plowed field,” but lost to Gwyn Staley, Enoch’s brother, who would later die in a 1958 crash at the Richmond Speedway. Johnson would go on to earn four of his fifty career NASCAR victories there and continued his success on the track as a team owner.
The last NASCAR race at North Wilkesboro, won by Jeff Gordon, was held on September 29, 1996, with over 60,000 fans in attendance.
References:
J. Jay Anderson, North Wilkesboro: The First Hundred Years, 1890-1990 (1990)
Peter Golenbeck, NASCAR Confidential: Stories of Men and Women Who Made Stock Car Racing Great (2003)
Tom Higgins and Steve Waid, Junior Johnson: Brave in Life (1999)
(North Wilkesboro) Wilkes Journal-Patriot, April 19 and May 19, 1947
Ed Hinton, “End of the Line,” Sports Illustrated, April 22, 1996
Winston-Salem Journal, January 26, 2007