20 High-Octane Pics From Old-School Raceways

If you were a prohibition era moonshine runner, then you needed a fast car. Why? To escape the cops, and look dang cool while doing it.

By Daniel Bonfiglio

Published 11 months ago in Wow

If you were a prohibition era moonshine runner, then you needed a fast car. Why? To escape the cops, and look dang cool while doing it.

Wilkes County North Carolina was a hotbed for the moonshine industry, and many of NASCAR's earliest stars either owned, or drove these high-powered escaping machines. So, in 1947, Bill France Sr. decided to organize those drivers at the Streamline Hotel in Daytona Beach, Florida. One year later, official stock car racing was born.

Of course, early cars and tracks are a world away from what they are now, and those of yesteryear featured much more dirt and death. But the style those guys had is undeniable, and their carefree daredevil spirit drills down to the core of what makes America special. You can see more on the NASCAR Hall of Fame website, but check out these 20 vintage pics from old school raceways right here.

2
Lee Petty (car No. 42) won more premier series races on dirt than any other driver.

3
Curtis Turner leads the field in the 1950 Poor Man’s 500 at the 0.500-mile Canfield (Ohio) Speedway dirt track.
4
North Carolina’s Occoneechee Speedway was a fast 1-mile dirt track that hosted 32 NASCAR premier series races from 1949 to 1968.

5
Forty of Buck Baker’s 46 career premier series victories came on dirt tracks.
6
Cars line up at the start of a race at Speedway Park in Maywood, Illinois in 1916.
7
North Wilkesboro Speedway in the heart of North Carolina moonshine country, was one of NASCAR’s original dirt tracks.

8
Herb Thomas and his Fabulous Hudson Hornet leads the field at Atlanta’s Lakewood Speedway at a race in 1954 that he went on to win.
9
Charlotte Speedway, shown here in a 1950 race, hosted the first NASCAR Strictly Stock Division race in 1949.
10
At the Daytona 500 on February 14, 1960, Johnson, No. 27, ducked around Curtis Turner, No. 26, and ultimately won the four-hour race.

11
Red Byron won the first Nascar race in 1948 on Daytona beach.
12
Seven-time NASCAR champion Richard Petty (car No. 43) on a dirt track.
13
North Wilkesboro Speedway, one of the original NASCAR tracks. Junior Johnson, the “Wilkes County Wildman,” took the checkered flag in this 1965 race.