Holding a model of
the 1964 Dodge he raced at the old
Occoneechee-Orange Speedway in
mid-'60s, Gene Hobby of Apex says
the racetrack is 'sacred ground.'
BY JESSE JAMES DECONTO - Staff
Writer - NEWSOBSERVER.COM
-
Published Fri, Dec 25, 2009 02:00 AM
HILLSBOROUGH -- As a young stock-car driver in 1965, Apex
resident Gene Hobby had a ball joint
fail, dropping the front end into
the dirt and rolling his Carolina
Blue Dodge 330 sedan over five
times.
"It's about like rolling in a 55-gallon drum down the side of a
mountain," he said.
Fortunately, it was the year NASCAR began requiring seatbelts,
and Hobby had tightened his during
the national anthem. He escaped with
a couple of bruises and a cut on his
finger. His friend Frank Craig,
though, was 12 years old and spilled
his snow cone all over himself.
"I was scared to death," Craig said. "You still owe me a snow
cone."
Forty-five years later, the N.C. Department of Transportation is
considering a new road that would
bisect the Occoneechee-Orange
Speedway, NASCAR's third-ever dirt
track. Built in 1948, it's now a
natural area that attracts runners,
dog-walkers, wild turkeys and dozens
of racing preservationists.
"This is sacred ground," said Hobby, 72, touring the speedway on
Wednesday. "DOT better not come
through here."
Crossing the track is one of three DOT alternatives for routing
traffic from N.C. 86 around downtown
Hillsborough. All start near its
junction with U.S. 70A and run north
to U.S. 70 near St.Mary's Road.
Boards oppose options
The speedway route would also pass within 100 feet of the
historic house at Ayr Mount, a
plantation that turns 200 years old
in 2015. Another route would knock
out about 20 homes, and the third
would pave Poplar Ridge overlooking
the Eno River.
The Hillsborough Town Board and the Orange County Board of
Commissioners have opposed all three
options. The boards prefer other
means of relieving congestion along
N.C. 86, the town's main north-south
corridor, which passes directly
through the quaint downtown.
Hillsborough Mayor Tom Stevens calls DOT's alternatives
"20th-century solutions for a
21st-century problem." He wants to
improve public transit and create
multiple routes around downtown with
minor realignments of existing
roads.
"They've got 100 ways to go around town without coming through
here," Hobby said of the speedway.
Vince Rhea, a DOT project planning engineer, said the Federal
Highway Administration and the N.C.
State Historic Preservation Office
will scrutinize the speedway
crossing because of its impact on
the national landmarks.
"If you've got another alternative that's feasible and prudent,
you're going to have a hard time
going through a protected property,"
he said. "They're not likely to do
that."
Rhea said the DOT and other state and federal agencies will
decide by the end of March whether
to proceed with the bypass.
Construction would be unlikely to
start for at least five years, he
said.
Restored past
Hobby and his partners in the Historic Speedway Group have spent
the past two years restoring the
track. They've cleared trees that
had overgrown the dirt track and
rebuilt the ticket booth, flag stand
and corrugated metal fence around
the grounds.
Craig, now the group's president, figures they've spent about
$70,000 and thousands of volunteer
hours on the project.
The Orange Speedway is one of three auto race tracks on the
National Register of Historic
Places. The others are the
Indianapolis Motor Speedway and the
Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah.
"God built that," Craig said.
"Can you imagine them putting a bypass through the Salt Flats or
Indianapolis?" Hobby added.
The Occoneechee Speedway was named for the Native American tribe
that populated North Carolina's
Piedmont until the 17th century. It
borrowed a straightaway from an old
horse-racing track on the site and
is the last remaining speedway from
NASCAR's inaugural season, 1949.
NASCAR founder Bill France Sr.
changed the name to Orange Speedway
in 1955.
"Nobody could spell Occoneechee," Craig explained.
A 52-year-old Hillsborough native, Craig said NASCAR king Richard
Petty's Plymouth HEMI engine would
echo through the town when he raced.
"It'd give you chills," Hobby added.
Hobby recalled spectators who climbed trees for a better view of
the track. Once, he said, a car
rolled off the track, hit a tree and
knocked three people to the ground.
The speedway also tells the story of integration: The ruins of
separate bathrooms remained even as
Craig told the story of Wendell
Scott, the only African-American to
win a NASCAR Sprint Cup race. "He
ran here," Craig said. "He was a
self-made man. ... He would
sometimes get out of the car and
change tireshimself."
Hobbled by the washboard ruts that marred the turns on the dirt
track, Hobby ended up losing the
1965 race to two-time NASCAR
champion Ned Jarrett. He was just
happy France had mandated seatbelts
that year.
Now, Hobby likes to show off a model of his No. 99 Dodge, about
the size of a loaf of bread, mounted
on a bed of dirt dug from the
speedway.
"Turn it upside down like it was," Craig urged him. "It turns
into No. 66."
Hillsborough Mayor Tom Stevens calls DOT's alternatives
"20th-century solutions for a 21st-century
problem." He wants to improve public transit and
create multiple routes around downtown with
minor realignments of existing roads.
