Big Enos and Little Enos found the Bandit at a truck rodeo. That opening scene of Smokey and the Bandit, filmed at the Lakewood Fairgrounds in 1977, captured something true about the place: Lakewood Speedway was where the South came to race, to bet, and to watch machines tear around a one-mile dirt oval built for horses. From 1917 to 1979, this track south of downtown Atlanta hosted every form of motorsport imaginable, from Indy cars and stock cars to midgets, motorcycles, and even boats on the infield lake. They called it the Indianapolis of the South, and for the better part of the twentieth century, the nickname fit.
In 1916, Atlanta officials chose the Lakewood Fairgrounds as the site for agricultural fairs and built a one-mile horse racing track around a lake. The first events came on July 4, 1917, when a horse race and a motorcycle race drew 23,000 spectators. An automobile race followed later that year, pitting two legends of early racing against each other: Barney Oldfield versus Ralph DePalma, before 15,000 fans. The transition from equine to engine was swift. Through the 1920s and 1930s, the International Motor Contest Association held races during fair season, and the American Automobile Association staged an annual Independence Day event that became a fixture on the national calendar. The track's asymmetric turns, with different radii at each end like Darlington Speedway, gave Lakewood a character all its own.
Lakewood's most famous moment belongs to Richard Petty. In 1959, the young driver took the checkered flag for what he believed was his first NASCAR Grand National victory. His father, Lee Petty, who had finished second, protested the result and requested a recount of the race scorecards. NASCAR officials obliged and awarded the win to the elder Petty. Richard would go on to win 200 career races, but that disputed finish at Lakewood remained one of stock car racing's great family dramas. The track produced other legends too. Gober Sosebee launched his career there in 1940. Johnny Beauchamp recorded his first NASCAR victory at Lakewood in 1959. Curtis Turner won races in 1959 Thunderbirds for the Holman Moody team. Bill Blair drove a 1952 Oldsmobile to victory in April of that year and ran his final race at Lakewood in 1958.
Lakewood was fast and unforgiving. The dirt surface, the asymmetric turns, and the era's minimal safety equipment made the track lethal. Skimp Hersey received severe burns in a stock car crash on June 11, 1950, and died the following day. Frank Luptow of Tampa was killed when a broken axle flipped his car and crushed him. Art Bisch died two days after his Champ Car smashed into the guardrail and rolled over twice during a USAC race on July 4, 1958. These deaths were not unusual for the period, but they underscore the raw danger that defined racing at Lakewood, a track where the margin between glory and catastrophe was measured in inches of Georgia clay.
When Atlanta Motor Speedway opened twenty miles to the south in 1960, it was a modern, paved superspeedway that immediately absorbed Lakewood's NASCAR dates. The old dirt track could not compete. Racing continued on a smaller scale through the 1960s and 1970s, but the crowds thinned and the grandstands aged. On September 3, 1979, Buck Simmons won the final auto race ever held at Lakewood Speedway, closing out six decades of competition on Labor Day. The track fell silent. Grass and brush reclaimed the oval. Today, the Lakewood Fairgrounds structures that surrounded the speedway have been repurposed as Screen Gems Studios, a major film production facility. The dirt track itself is gone, but its legacy endures in the record books and in the grainy footage of a young Richard Petty arguing with his father over a finish line.
Located at 33.702N, 84.390W in south Atlanta, just north of the eastern arm of Langford Parkway. The former speedway site is adjacent to the Lakewood Fairgrounds, now partly occupied by Screen Gems Studios Atlanta. From the air, look for the large open area and studio complex south of I-20 and east of I-75/I-85. Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport (KATL) is approximately 5 nm to the south. The oval footprint is no longer visible. Best viewed at 2,000-3,000 ft AGL. Within Atlanta Class B airspace.