Silent Speedways

Yesterday’s News & Observer had a long article about the auction of the North Carolina Speedway in Rockingham, once one of the premier stops on the NASCAR circuit. The article is a nice complement to the new book, Silent Speedways of the Carolinas by Perry Allen Wood. Wood’s book offers extensive histories of twenty-nine former tracks in North and South Carolina. The book is thoroughly researched, and illustrated with black and white photographs. Just paging through the images, these former sites of racing glory all seem to look alike — to any but the most careful observer, they would appear as little more than overgrown vacant lots.