Capella Speedway - A Short-Lived And Forgotten NC Half-Miler **UPDATE** (Aerials Found)

Capella is a tiny farm community just north of Rural Hall and east of Pilot Mountain, NC off highway 66. In the late 40's local stock car racer Otis Roberts putCapella on the racing map for a brief periodwiththeir own half-mile track. Rumor was, Otis was able to attract Big Bill France to a race or twoin hopes he would add it to the circuit. But for whatever reasons, like so many other tracks,it just wasn't meant to be.

**UPDATE** - I've been looking for this track since I made this post 2 and a half years ago. I was thrilled when I found this 1950 aerial showing the paperclip shaped half-mile track. The approximate address is 1330 High Valley Road, behind a house on the left, headed north. Town Fork Creek ran down the east side of the track, which was probably used as the water supply.

The track may have still been in use at this time -

1962 Ghost Track -

Today vs. 1950 -

Edit: Found a clearer aerial photo -

From "The Stokes News" website - March 29, 2010 -

A badly misspelled adwith articlefor a race in 1947...No results were found-

Race articlefrom May 9,1948 -

This may have hadsomething to do with the track's demise -

Very interesting reading and I would agree that the wreck in the High Point race had something to do with the short lived Capella Race Track. Thanks for posting.

Thanks, Mike. I found some good news after that last article...It seems the fence destroying Otis Roberts turned out to be indestructable himself -

Thanks for checking it out. The pre and post war racing is my favorite time of the sport. I love digging up these old articles. They're treasure to me.

Robert, great job!! Thanks for sharing.

Robert, do you have a date for the Fayetteville article/race? Racing's always had a pretty good foothold in Cumberland co. and this looks to be its beginning.

Bobby, the Fayettevillerace was on SundayMay 30, 1948. I'll look fora race results article next time I'm at the library if you'd like.

That would be great, Robert!

Bobby, here are the results. What was the track known as...Cumberland, or Fayetteville Speedway?

Robert - This is really good stuff - Thanks for posting !!

The Cumberland County promoter, Floyd Rankin once raced open wheel cars in AAA.

NC State University student, Billy Sockwell of Greensboro, NC used to field a two car open wheel team featuring he and Sockwell. I have read accounts of both operating racing garages in Greensboro. They entered the 1933 Indy 500.

The link below will take you to a 1933 story in the Spartanburg Herald-Journal telling of Rankin & Sockwell entering the Spartanburg Fair races in 1933.

http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1876&dat=19331024&id=...

I do not know.

In looking up Brian Sockwell's bio, I note he is from Brown Summit, NC. That is a rural "suburb" of Greensboro, Bill Sockwell's hometown. Maybe they are related as you speculate.

Robert, over the years, Fayetteville has had several different tracks.....Champion Speedway, Fayetteville Speedway, Cumberland Int'l Speedway aka Fayetteville Motor Speedway. Not sure if this is the complete list, but of this group, the Champion Speedway is the oldest and was operating in the 1950's, even hosting a few NASCAR GN events. The host track for this 1948 event, if it was Fayetteville's first stock car race, may have been a converted fairgrounds/horse track, common to many early NASCAR venues.

Jack, thanks for checking it out. I've got a bunch of these old articles on various tracks, and I'll keep posting them when I can.

Being the first big stock car race for Fayetteville, it would be cool to find out where this track was!

I raced at Champion Speedway many times.

Here's a pretty good shot from the infield looking at the main grandstand at the paved Cumberland International posted several years ago by "Racing Girl" of Raleigh, NC on Local Race Chat. There were some memorable Late Model & Modified races there in the 70s that drew all the big stars. I was fortunate to see several shows there.

I just updated this post with aerial photos of Capella Speedway. Scroll back up to the original post to check them out!