The track exists because of Elsie Webb — an attorney from Hamlet, North Carolina, who in 1964 led a group of eleven investors to put up roughly a million dollars on 175 acres of Sandhills scrub off U.S. 1. Harold Brasington, who had built Darlington a decade earlier, ran the construction. By August 1965 the asphalt was poured. By September, David Pearson set an official world record on a closed mile oval at 113.175 mph. By Halloween, Curtis Turner had won the first American 500. When Brasington sold his stake the following January, Webb took over as president — running the speedway herself until ulcer-surgery complications killed her on January 18, 1972. That a Cup-level track in the 1960s was led by a woman attorney is a fact NASCAR's official histories tend to mention quickly and move past.

Rockingham's identity was its racing surface. The asphalt was abrasive — drivers complained it ate tires too fast — and in 1977 track officials tried sealing it for the Carolina 500. The sealant made the surface so slippery the race became, in the words of one beat reporter, a 'demolition derby.' For years afterward, drivers grumbled about what they called 'bear grease.' Track management kept sealing because it was cheaper than repaving. The roughness was also what made the racing good. Tire wear forced strategy. Cars slid. Patience won races. By the late 1990s, Rockingham was widely cited as a driver favorite, even as the grandstands began to thin.

The 1990s set up the fight that ultimately doomed Rockingham's Cup weekend. L. G. DeWitt, the peach farmer and NASCAR team owner who took over after Webb's death, died in 1990. His daughter Carrie inherited a controlling stake. In 1995 two of the biggest names in American motorsports — Roger Penske and Bruton Smith — started buying minority shares. Through 1997 they conducted a bidding war that climbed from $29 million to $72 million. Carrie eventually sold to Penske, fearing Smith would let the track die the way his Speedway Motorsports company had let North Wilkesboro die. In 1999 Penske's company merged with ISC, the France-family operator that controlled most of the NASCAR calendar. By 2003 the writing was on the wall: Rockingham's market was too small, attendance too thin, and the Ferko lawsuit — a SMI shareholder suing NASCAR over Texas Motor Speedway's race dates — gave ISC the pretext it needed. In May 2004 the last Cup race ran. The date went to Texas. The Rock went quiet.

Andy Hillenburg, a former NASCAR driver, bought the speedway at auction in 2007 for $4.4 million. He brought ARCA racing in 2008, then a Truck Series race in 2012 that Kasey Kahne won — the first NASCAR-sanctioned event at the facility since 2004. One more Truck race ran in 2013. Then the bank moved in. By 2014 the track was in receivership, owing more than $4.5 million. An auction was set for March 2015. A disabled-veterans charity proposed turning the facility into a 'reintegration center.' Nothing came of it. For most of the 2010s, Rockingham Speedway sat empty — grandstands rusting, infield grass growing tall, the SAFER barriers still bolted to walls no car was hitting.

A group led by Charlotte developer Dan Lovenheim bought The Rock in August 2018 for $2.8 million. Governor Roy Cooper proposed $8 million in state aid. The Epicenter music festival drew 75,000 people in May 2019. North Carolina eventually approved $9 million in COVID-relief funding to repave the surface, and by December 2022 the asphalt was new. NASCAR announced its return on August 29, 2024 — Xfinity and Truck Series events in 2025, the first national series races here in twelve years. By December 31, 2025, the International Hot Rod Association had bought the facility. The Rock had outlasted its obituary, again.