Lost Speedways

 Last Saturday night, as I listened to the Senoia Raceway announcers lamenting the loss of Gresham Motorsports Park in Jefferson, I was thankful that the home track wasn’t the one that was closing.

 I also thought about the tracks from this area that unfortunately have fallen by the wayside. Race tracks aren’t just real estate for those who love the sport, they’re places in the heart.

 They remain with you long after they’ve been bulldozed out of existence.

 I know I’m not alone in feeling this way. Dale Earnhardt Jr. and his cohorts have captured that sentiment in their “Lost Speedways” series.

  Our part of the world seems to have lost more than its share of race tracks – some that came and went before my time of attending races and others that I knew very well.

 One of my favorites was the old West Atlanta Raceway, later known as Seven Flags Speedway. I also enjoyed races at Coweta Raceway, which was still somewhat intact last time I went by there but only hosting go kart races in the infield.

 Zebulon Speedway closed after a few seasons in the late 1960s then reopened several years ago as a kart track only to be razed a couple of years ago to make room for commercial development.

 Also gone are dirt tracks in Gray, Palmetto and LaGrange.

  One of the most historic tracks in American racing history, Lakewood Speedway, was just a short drive north of our home turf.

 Known both as the “Grand Old Lady” and “Indianapolis of the South” the one-mile dirt oval was once a regular stop for the Indianapolis-type cars as well as the early stock car circuits including NASCAR.

  The track was dangerous and dusty, but it almost found new life as a more modern track.

 According to my research years ago, William B. Hartsfield, the famous Atlanta mayor who had the vision to capitalize on the aviation industry in its infancy and build an airport that now bears his name, also was forward thinking when it came to racing.

 When he could no longer be mayor due to term limits, he became chairman of the fair board that oversaw Lakewood Speedway.

 He built a fancy enclosed suite above the concession stands, an amenity that was way ahead of its time. He also formulated plans to shorten the track to three-quarters of a mile and pave it. That would have made it like Richmond Raceway is today.

 But before his plans could be put in place, he lost the votes he needed on the fair board.

 It remains one of the great “what ifs” in Georgia racing history.

 One track that has always intrigued me is Griffin Speedway, a half-mile dirt oval located near Mud Bridge Road in northern Spalding County, just over the line from Fayette and Clayton counties.

 It only hosted a few races in the late 1940s, after stock car racing resumed following a pause during World War II.

 From what I’ve been told, the first couple of races, held on Sunday afternoons, were well attended. But the crowd apparently was a little too rowdy for the church-going day of the week, and a local judge ruled that the races couldn’t run on Sunday.

 With most fans having to work at least part of a day on Saturday, the only other real option, that track too was doomed.

  I got to thinking about Griffin Speedway the other Sunday as I drove close to the old site on my way to Atlanta Motor Speedway, which is only a few miles from where the old dirt track once was.

 I thought about the people I knew who raced there or attended races there and shared their memories with me. Like the track itself, they’re all gone now.

 But not from my heart.