For 44 years, the Banks County Speedway sat silent, overgrown with trees and brush, derelict cars and a herd of goats the only visitors it had.
That all changed on Saturday.
The speedway, located between Homer and Baldwin, a short distance off of Highway 441, has been resurrected by the family of the late Tommie Irvin. On Saturday, the speedway played host to the first annual Banks County Speedway Reunion.
To talk to those that raced there, it was an amazing sight to see, as the Irvin family, with help from a lot of friends, had worked to clear the land to bring the track back. The trees were milled, and the boards used to rebuild the concession stand, rest rooms, ticket booth and flag stand. A road grader was brought in to recut the original layout of the track, a high banked quarter mile layout, complete with its signature curved backstretch.
For the first time in 44 years, race cars filled the pits, as both vintage and current dirt track and asphalt racers were on display.
The track originally opened in 1956, built by Georgia Racing Hall of Famer Tommie Irvin. Irvin, who was a successful stock car racer dating back to the end of World War II, had used the proceeds from the biggest win of his career, the 1955 Labor Day race at Atlanta’s famed Lakewood Speedway, to fund the building of the track.
For Bobby Irvin, son of Tommie Irvin, bringing the track back and holding the reunion was a true labor of love.
“Donald Brooks invited me to come down to the Athens Speedway reunion, and I was so impressed in seeing some of the old cars and in seeing some of the guys that I hadn’t seen in 40 years that used to race at our track here,” Irvin said. “I just thought our old track is just sitting there growing up in trees and it’s just a shame to not proceed with preserving the old foundation of stock car racing.”
The speedway played host to the best of the best in its day, including Gainesville’s Bud Lunsford, Dawsonville’s Gober Sosebee, Chattanooga’s Freddy Fryar, Baldwin’s Buck Simmons and even NASCAR stars the Flock Brothers – Tim, Bob and Fonty – of Atlanta.
Then, they shared the love of racing with Tommie Irvin. Today, they share the honor of all being members of the Georgia Racing Hall of Fame.
But the racing days for the speedway came to an end in 1971. A crash at Covington's Yellow River Drag Strip the year before had left 11 spectators dead, and led to sweeping changes in the way the state of Georgia regulated racetracks. Gone were the wooden grandstands and wooden guardrails. Tracks had to be updated and had to have at least a million dollars worth of liability insurance to operate.
Rather than put more money into the speedway, Tommie Irvin made the decision to close up shop. He would instead operate a nearby store, where many of his racing buddies would come to shop and swap racing stories over the years. Irvin operated the store until his passing in November of 2010.
But now, the track is back, and not far from fighting shape. On Saturday, it looked like all that needed to be done was for the track to be watered down and packed to get ready to go racing. For former driver Bobbie Whitmire of Commerce, himself a pioneer racer, seeing the speedway returned to its racing state was a welcome sight, even if some of the memories weren’t exactly winning ones.
“I hit a wall down there one time,” he said. “(I) Turned (the car) over there one time. I remember Tootle Estes climbed that bank over there and rolled the whole straightaway. Some of those old memories are coming back.”
Bobby Irvin says there are more steps to be taken to the track. He hopes to put the guard rails back. He wants to put the light poles, complete with the original track lights, back up in the infield. There’s even talk of putting the grandstands back in place.
But, he says, there are no plans to return racing to the speedway. Between county zoning laws, insurance costs and the fact that there are several dirt tracks located within a 50 mile radius that are already making car counts tough to maintain, he said the family is happy with it being a monument to his late father.
But he said plans are already in place for next year’s reunion.
“We just ran out of time, but we’ve got a lot of plans for the future.”
No matter what the Irvin family plans to do with the facility from here, the work they’ve put into it proves that some of the legendary speed plants around the area could be brought back with a little hard work.
But more than that, it’s a living, breathing tribute to Tommie Irvin, a man who meant a great deal to Northeast Georgia’s racing scene.
