Arkansas NASCAR Track? Who knew?
A workmate of mine clued me in a little-known piece of Arkansas motorsports history that can be viewed via google maps.
“From 1954-57, Memphis-Arkansas Speedway was a regular NASCAR stop. The drivers who would become stock car racing’s first legends tested their grit and machines on the high-banked 11/2 -mile dirt oval located a few miles to the west of West Memphis, near Lehi, Ark.”
“I remember going there a long time ago. We raced there in the summer and I went with Daddy,” seven-time NASCAR champion Richard Petty said about his racing adventures with his father, Lee Petty. “The track had a lot of banking, and I remember that they had two ponds on both ends of the speedway. They used that dirt for the banking.
On June 10, 1956, 28-year-old Iowa-native Clint McHugh died from injuries suffered from a crash during qualifying.
McHugh was driving close to 90 mph when he reached Turn 3. According to accounts from the time, McHugh swerved, flipped and tumbled over a guard rail and into a lake 50 feet below the embankment.
After a 1957 race, track owners Clarence Camp, Harold Woolridge and Nat Epstein ran out of money and sold the land to Clayton Eubanks Sr. in 1958. After the Eubanks family took over the facility, it was folded in as part of the farm.
“We raised catfish in the infield area of the track for a couple of years,” Parker Eubanks said. “Then we leveled out the grade and bedded rice and grew soybeans in it.”
“If the interstate would have been complete, it’s only a mile from Lehi to the off-ramp. They could have gotten onto the interstate and it would have been great”
Old Race results from the Memphis track