Great post and great article, Dave. What a time capsule and history lesson that article is. And I'd forgotten that Perk won not 1 but 3 Bowman Gray Championships, not to mention 33 races. The stories of all the early tracks are gems.
When I saw Billy & Bobby "Mizes" (Myers) it made me wonder if Perk's southern accent caused that misspelling by the author.
Happy Birthday, Cody. Now go get that drivers license, buy you an old classic, fix it up, and start hotrodding.
Charles Craig sent me these newspaper clips from Glenn Dunaway's personal scrapbook. Thanks to the Dunaway family.
I enjoyed the Ghost Track show Bobby, thanks for the Lake Wood mention!
One thing I wanted to mention... If you'll notice in the earliest 1960 aerial, Lake Norman wasn't even there at the time, just farm land and a good sized river about a mile to the west. Then, by the 1965 aerial Lake Norman was there. Apparently they had dammed up the river and formed the lake sometime between 1960 and 1965. A pretty staggering difference in the landscape in that 5 years, and luckily the tracks footprint survived right up the the edge.
Charles, I can't wait to see that photo!
Thanks, Bobby. And thanks for the massive list of early tracks you've compiled over the years. Out of "the list" how many havebeen found so far? You should make a post of the list with the found tracks checked off. It's gotta be 100 you've already found!
An earlier post by Bobby Williamson about this 1950's track unfortunately didn't turn up any newinfo on where is was or articles on any races there, but it did get me lookingfor it when I had the time and I finally hit pay dirt, all one mile of it.
Lake Wood Speedway was located near Denver, NC on old (Business) Highway 16 a little over a mile north of the intersection of 16 &Highway 73 right on the edge of what is nowLake Norman.
According toan ad for the July 30, 1950 opening races, it was a new one mile track promoted by none other than the infamousBruton Smith, and had an ambitious slate ofone 125 mile Strictly Stock car race, and one 75 mile Modified race. No NASCAR sanction.
The track had a small pond in the infield and an odd wedge shape for turns 3 & 4, and is almost humorously similar to thefamous early Atlanta track of the same name, other than the two word spelling.And looking at the 1960 aerial photo it appears the track was active up until that year or at least closeto it.
Today two roads with houses, Cherry Point Drive and Lucky Creek Lane, almost perfectly follow the outline of the old racetrack with the pond still in the middle.
1960 aerial -
1960 aerial close-up showing the grandstands on the north straight-
1965 close-up -
1965 aerial-
Look how much Lake Norman has grown since 1960 -
Aerial of the track footprint today -
I see Eb Clifton in those lists a few times. Eb started racing in '48 or '49 and he's still at it, helping build the cars at the shop in Rural Hallwhere his grandson Tim Brown's Bowman Gray car is built. He's gotta be at least 85 now. And Fred Harb who startedracing in the '40sis still running his garage in High Point!
Oh, and I ran into Harry Leake at the K & W here in Winston a couple of weeks ago. Super nice guy.
Very cool model, Chuck! The Steelman #9 has such ahuge history with all the places it raced and the legendary drivers that drove it and won races with it,so it's nice to see the car get some recognition.
