The Historic Occoneechee Speedway Trail occupies a site along the Eno River whose history reaches back to the 17th century, when the Occaneechi Band of the Saponi Nation lived there. In the late 1700s, James Hogg, an original trustee of the University of North Carolina, and other families settled and farmed the fertile land, and Hogg's three-home plantation was called Poplar Hill. In the 1890s, General Julian Carr bought Poplar Hill and the surrounding land and expanded the farm to include a horse racetrack. For more than 150 years, the land was used for agriculture under several owners. NASCAR and automobile racing in the South grew out of early 1900s informal contests among bootleggers who modified their vehicles for speed and handling in rural areas. In 1947, Bill France spotted the racetrack while flying over Orange County and, with Enoch Staley, Ben Lowe, Dobe Powell, and Joe Buck, formed Hillsboro Speedway Inc. to buy the 200-acre parcel and develop the Occoneechee Speedway as an auto racetrack. In 1949, NASCAR held its first race on the one-mile dirt track, a 100-mile event attended by more than 20,000 fans. Over the next 20 years, the track hosted many races, local athletic games, and community events until 1968, when the opening of the Talladega track in Alabama took its place. The final NASCAR race there, The Hillsboro 150, was held on September 15, 1968, and Richard Petty won. By 1969, racing had lost political favor locally, the Speedway fell out of use, and nature began reclaiming the land. In the early 1980s, the property was threatened by a proposed bypass, but preservation groups and trusts worked together to protect the natural and historic integrity of the Speedway property and surrounding land. In 1997, Classical American Homes Preservation Trust took ownership of the property, and in 2002 the site was added to the National Register of Historic Places. In 2006, local racing enthusiasts formed the Historic Speedway Group to help restore and maintain the site, and in 2011 Classical American Homes Preservation Trust joined with the Mountains-to-Sea Trail to connect it to the statewide trail system. Today, Classical American Homes Preservation Trust owns and manages the site along with Ayr Mount across the Eno River.