2011 Salisbury Post Salisbury Super Speedway

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Rowan's 'Days of Thunder'Posted: Saturday, October 22, 2011 12:01 a.m.

UPDATED: Wednesday, April 18, 2012 12:21 a.m.

By Chris Verner

Salisbury Post

On Oct. 6, 1958, the Salisbury Evening Posts front page carried the news that Pope Pius

XII had suffered a stroke and lay at deaths door.

A racially motivated bomb blast had wrecked a high school in Clinton, Tenn.

The Yankees had beaten the Milwaukee Braves 7-0 in the fifth game of the World Series.

And inside the sports pages was this headline: Lee Petty drives Olds to win at local track.

The story began like this: Veteran driver Lee Petty of Randleman practically put locks onthe 1958 Grand National points championship by winning the 100-mile late model hardtop

race at the new Salisbury Super Speedway yesterday.

For his Sunday afternoon drive which was delayed because of a muddy track Petty

pocketed $800 in prize money. His 57 Olds led a field of legendary names in stock-car

racing. Buck Baker finished second (the only other car on the lead lap). Tiny Lund, Cotton

Owens, Gober Sosebee and Roy Tyner were among the field. Back in 22nd place was a

promising young hotshoe named Richard Petty.

n's 'Days of Thunder' | Salisbury Post http://www.salisburypost.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?avis=SP&dat

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Big time NASCAR racing in Salisbury at a super speedway?

Today, Salisbury is merely a way station for NASCAR fans passing to or from Charlotte Motor

Speedway or the new NASCAR Hall of Fame. But more than half a century ago, NASCARs

top tiers of competition made a detour here, giving Rowan County a slice of stock-car racing

lore. It also connects Salisbury to one of the formative figures in racing speedway mogul

O. Bruton Smith and ultimately leaves a tantalizing question: Why did the tracks days of

NASCAR thunder so quickly disappear?Today, the track has been obliterated from the landscape and largely from local memory. It

was situated at the old fair grounds, about three miles south of the city, on the west side of

what was then called the national highway, now U.S. 29. It was incorporated by Smith, at

the time an ambitious 31-year-old promoter staging races around the region, including

tracks in Concord and the Charlotte fairgrounds.

Smith began work on the track in the summer of 1958. A June 12 Post article describes it as

a super speedway for major stock car racing, scheduled to open that fall. The track was

located on property owned by Walter McCanless. It was once used for horse and

automobile racing.

In that early era, with NASCAR barely a decade old, there was nothing unusual about a

red-clay race track stuck along the roadside. The Souths major asphalt-surfaced track,

Darlington, had been in operation only eight years; Daytona International Speedway would

hold its inaugural race the following February. In his book Silent Speedways of the

Carolinas, author Perry Allen Wood writes of 29 former tracks that held at least one major

race, including a short segment on Salisbury Super Speedway. But when Smith ventured

into Salisbury, he apparently had grander plans than simply carving out another

cow-pasture arena for jousting jalopies.The track work cost $150,000 the equivalent of more than $1 million today the Post

reported. The oval speedway, officially recorded as .625 miles in length, had banked corners

and featured a new brick and concrete grandstand that would seat 6,000 spectators.

It was the first stock-car racing course to be added to the circuit in North Carolina in several

years, the Post reported, describing the facility as a modern racing plant.

Smith calls the Salisbury Super Speedway one of the finest courses in the East, one story

recounts, and has announced that only major stock-car racing will be staged here.

An earlier promoter

Smiths renovated track followed the red-clay ruts left by another larger-than-life figure with

a penchant for speed. Three decades before, in the summer of 1929, textile tycoon Walter F.

McCanless had set the area abuzz with his plans for a grand county fair.

Born in Gold Hill in 1887, the son of Napoleon Bonaparte McCanless, W.F. McCanless was

himself a showman as well as a cane-toting industrial titan who made and lost several

fortunes, according to contemporary accounts. Today, hes chiefly remembered for the grand

mansion he built on Confederate Avenue, one of Salisburys historic showcases. At one

time, he owned five textile mills in Rowan. His Circle M. Ranch encompassed upwards of


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2,000 acres, where he operated a thoroughbred stable known as Maple Grove and later

raised prize-winning cattle.

McCanless did things in a big way, and the fairgrounds was no exception. A June 2, 1929,

Post article sets the scene: Salisbury and Rowan County are to have a great district fair this

fall, to be staged on a new and modern fairgrounds, one of the best in this entire section of

the country.

Built on more than 50 acres, the fair site featured brick exhibition buildings, a largeswimming pool and bath houses, a large and beautiful dance Hall and spacious midway,

all illuminated by an electric light system. McCanless even bought two elephants,

apparently intending to establish an exotic zoo.

The centerpiece, however, was a half-mile race track, built to showcase thundering

thoroughbreds, and a steel-frame grandstand that could seat 3,000.

On Oct. 13, 1929, as the fairs opening drew near, another Post article noted From boyhood

Walter McCanless has been a lover or horses and ... has taken special interest in the racing

program to be presented. Horses from a number of states are already quartered in the

splendid large brick Maple Grove racing stables. ... The running races will be the best ever

put on a racing card in North Carolina.

(McCanless also wasnt averse to a wager; he attempted to bring parimutuel betting to the

county, personally paying for a 1933 referendum that voters rejected.)

The initial horse races proved popular, filling the stands and drawing entrants from as far

away as Ohio and New York. The only mention of autos on the track, however, concerns a

one-lap race between a horse named Warren and a special Dodge runabout. The Dodge

won.

In subsequent years, McCanless expanded the calendar to include summer horse racing and big car competitions, featuring open-wheeled, Indy-style cars. On July 4, 1931, an

auto race drew several entrants wheeling fenderless specials. The highlight of the event,

apparently, was when a driver named Banks Lopp crashed through a fence while attempting

to negotiate one of the unbanked turns but was not injured to any serious extent. By 1932,

McCanless had contracted with Gray Auto and Air Races Association of Lexington to stage

auto races. Some six or eight prominent dirt track racers signed up for a late October race,

the Post relates, including racers from Jacksonville, Fla., West Virginia and Atlanta.

The immense grandstand was pretty well filled, the Post reported, and great crowds were

packed around the railings of the half-mile race course to witness the demons of the track

as they pushed their respective cars for all they were worth.

During the late 1930s, the fairgrounds track attracted the interest of the Piedmont regions

early stock-car racers. In his book Real NASCAR: White Lightning, Red Clay and Big Bill

France, historian Daniel Pierce cites the Salisbury track and another in Spartanburg, S.C.,

as among the first in the Carolinas to organize stock-car races, starting in 1939, and both

remained major stops for stockers throughout the prewar period.

In a notable competition in 1940, the Salisbury track hosted one of nine major stock car


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Charlotte. Less than a year after promoting races at the Salisbury track, he and partner

Curtis Turner broke ground on Charlotte Motor Speedway, which after a rocky start that

included bankruptcy would eventually become the cornerstone of his racing empire.

In a 2005 interview with writer John Davison (archived at the website

www.fastmachines.com), Smith talked about his transition from itinerant promoter to

ownership of a 1.5-mile paved speedway in Charlotte.

I was promoting three to four races per week at various facilities in the region, which I didntown, he said. Everything regarding these promotional efforts centered on my effort, and if I

got in a wreck or was laid up for six months, Id be totally broke. I had no security. I decided

Charlotte needed a serious speedway.

The legal entanglements attached to the McCanless property also may have been a factor.

McCanless died on Oct. 9, 1958, only four days after Lee Pettys victory. His death set in

motion the breakup of his estate, with the majority of his holdings, including the racetrack

property, being sold and subsequently converted to industrial and residential development.

Its fascinating to ponder the red-clay past and wonder what might have been, but we can

only know what was. For a few raucous days in the fall of 1958, Salisbury and Rowan

County were home to a NASCAR venue. The Grand National win in Salisbury was Lee

Pettys final first-place finish of the season, and it did clinch the points championship for

him. Bob Welborns win was also part of his convertible championship season. In yet

another footnote, the October race marked the fourth and final pole position captured by

Gober Sosebee, who would retire from competitive driving the next year.

The track is gone, but Salisbury and Rowan County can still claim a piece of NASCAR

history and a permanent place in the 1958 record books.


2011 Salisbury Post Salisbury Super Speedway

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