Inside North Wilkesboro Speedway's ORIGINAL Buildings: Full History Tour Before The Renovation!

oh that's cool all the rj reynolds people were in here look at this elevator contraption the length of it and this width right here was the original chicken coop it's a downhill front straight away and an uphill back straightaway we're going to get to see the inside chicken apples things like that's how what made this place this was race control for nascar right here this is an incredible shape did you think that the first track the monte carlo would be on would be northwest girl never ever here it is it's just so cool coming up over the hill and seeing that stuff out there is you just would not expect it anywhere out here it's just farmland hills and little houses and boom think of racetrack grand this place was back in its meeting i think 1946 when this thing was built this was like insane not all of it was here but you know what i mean yeah this is a big time stuff here we are at north wilkesboro speedway it's coming back and we're going to bring it to you everything in there exactly the way it is before it all gets you know ripped out redone freshened up get used again whatever they're gonna do with it this may be the first time anyone has ever done a full in-depth video tour of this place in its current condition and it may be the last time that's ever done our goal here is to show everyone what this place looks like before it is renovated for use again because right now it's a time capsule and we're gonna dive in we gotta go find ronnie the guy that manages the property here grew up around here he knows everything so we're told this is going to be fun that's a cool picture and we drove the monte carlo up here because we felt like we had to and it is really cool to see that car sitting at this race track well here he is this is ronnie i'm the director of operations for smi at the north wilkesboro speedway how long have you been associated with this track well pretty much all my life my uncle paul has been here pretty much since 47 and then permanent presidency in 64. he's just been a real asset it's been awesome to come down and grow up here him my dad were good friends just like brothers he married my dad's sister and you know it's just when you've been here all your life you know you just grew up at this place so your uncle's paul calls yes okay yes so we know who he is yes sir yeah the paul called thee that's right we want to see the you know the history of all the buildings what they are and everything what is this right here well this is where it started out where the north wilkesboro kicking off his signs at that was an old chicken coop or a chicken house whatever you wanna call it a little small had a dirt floor and uh there's pictures you know out there that's documented showing it they started selling tickets it was a dirt floor uh bill france senior's wife annie she come down and she sold tickets here on a dirt floor uh that's just something you've heard all your life and that block structure is was originally built on the chicken coop the original structure right here the length of it and this width right here was the original chicken coop wow they did not know that yes and then later later along they extended it up to here and what that extension entailed was just bigger ticket windows to sell tickets out of and just a little more office space for any sisters was that like i said this was the newer and when you get through this other door that's all the original in there a lot of the original stuff is there anything uh like you see there's winston on the door and stuff yeah nothing major in there hanging up no nothing nothing cool no artifacts nope all that stuff's gone there's paneling just bare walls cinder block center block walls are in there that the original place so you know just it starts there and a lot of history a lot of history that was one of the original that's one of the original concession stands all the old pictures you see shows this area right here as being one of the original concession stands on top concession stand on the bottom so they caught them and uh so that was like the first one yeah that's the first so there was there was a ramp to get up the grand stand that one they really had that one and they had one down in the infield uh two matter of fact they had an old cinderblock one that we've tore down and then the old scores tower was an outside scoring tower plus it had a concession underneath for the infield and the pit people you know mostly the pit people interesting yes that's cool so so then you go to the winston tower uh that was built in the 70s and uh pretty much luxurious you know in that day to go up here and see it is this going to be kept with the renovation this stock this stays with a renovation yes sir it does and uh just just some minor tweaking just some minor tweaking on it it's got a place or two it's leaking but uh overall it's pretty good this is the block building how much could go wrong with it we're going to get to see the inside it's an awesome it's an awesome structure really going back in time you know when you walk in uh this was for the food already prepared come into here and stayed under warmers and different things and then the folks started serving it they brought it out into an area they had a this was this was like a gathering area and then over here was like the place they could actually get their food and sit around the bar pretty awesome wow pretty awesome restrooms there pretty good shape for the for the age of the building is in pretty good shape this is not bad at all 200 225 air-conditioned seats still got the winston still got the winston look wow yep it is in not bad shape in here at all i would have thought it would be worse yeah this is fine it's absolutely awesome and and barry's going to use this during the august and october races that's insane sure enough 225 seats like i say and air conditioned uh speakers so you could hear uh just really nice in its day as far as comfort so this was added in the 70s yeah where all the corporate guests of mason yes yes and different folks i mean there's a different clientele came in here this is one of the first concession stands it's a good structure all it needs is a new roof all the hand lettering is really cool oh yeah i had a had a guy from down in hamptonville named bill brown he did all the signs here he hand-painted every sign you needed a sign you go to bill brown he'd have it done for you in a little while just no matter what it needed to say he'd have it done that's cool especially week of race we were wondering that are you going to have hand lettered signs again well i don't know that but i think that would be awesome to keep it they're wanting to keep it retro so i think it'd be awesome to do that yeah we think so too i really do so many things that i think needs to would be awesome well when were these um boxes built up here these were the latter ones these were early 90s early 90s and uh these were these are these are gonna stay and uh they're they're in immaculate shape they got some little things you know maybe a a small roof leak here and there gotta kill got a wall smith somewhere no way oh my gosh my grandma had this carpet you know you can see what this was it was lovely there's a bar they had tables in here they had food most of the time the food was here and you could kind of lay on down here this is an incredible shape yes one piece of lex sand they busted out but that gets put back and like i said barry's barry's uh talking about using this one and that one both wow just a great view air conditioning yesterday just an awesome place it really is yes it seems like yesterday oh yeah there's a bunch of i got a trailer load of chairs over there just like that i put them in the dryer there's a trailer load here these seats are like these are fine this is this is insane i never would have thought that you like the paneling i think it's awesome yeah keep the paneling yeah that's right that's exactly right when did the roof blow off the bathrooms down there uh that's been probably probably 0.9 008.09 probably was there a big storm that came here partly yeah a big wind storm came through and pour up some stuff and then that caused it to leak more and it got to be to the point that the leaking so dramatic you know you can't do nothing about it but all this is good this is this is in great shape uh that's uh that right there is for the concession folks that looked after the concession they uh like especially sometimes two weeks prior to the right this depend but definitely the week of the race they stayed in that they didn't even go to their house they lived here locally but that was their little apartment that they could stay in got all the comforts of home wow and all these things here was different things like anywhere from a lemonade stand to a souvenir place before they sold souvenirs all those were built at the same time all the history just gets more and more as you go down through here because this was one of the first original as you see the old pictures this was the first original uh structure that was the press box or the uh the pa speakers and all that stuff what year was this built well there's pictures going back in the late 60s this was standing here you know what i'm saying this was the first one and then like i said that become where this has become where benny parsons and bob jenkins done espn in here all your espn stuff went out of here wow it's just immaculate no no leaks no leaks just thank the lord the vandalism hadn't really got a hole right here you know like it has other places we're back again and this is the press box where all your press would be everybody the riders for nascar or whoever would be i feel like we're not supposed to drive up here but we are still in plastic wrap like they knew how to build things back then so you got to turn it on we're checking out every square inch of this place today this room is a documentary in and of itself was the last cup series race here ever yeah that is awesome you don't really understand the banking here unless you're actually here you want to see the boneyard i want to see the boneyard if we saw a dead body in there man this would go so viral in this room back in the day they weren't very tall back there they weren't very tall yeah there's nothing on there thankfully we'll let us sing that they want nothing on there matter of fact so anyway uh this was race control for nascar right here this was both rooms of race control so this is still like i said this is a good building be able to hopefully use this in august and october and uh so this next room was for mrn the uh we call him the voice of nascar barney hall he's set in this room right here what a great what a great friend right here in this room and a lot of it was soundproofed and the vandals just tore it off but this is where your mrn radio station would have been coming live from right here wow yeah that's so cool yeah so just uh just uh just a real good building still this whole paneling look great paneling awesome yeah awesome just takes you back to the takes you back to the day family's gonna make a comeback i'm sure i'm sure no doubt know that wow this is cool so like i said most of the history i urge you to take you want it most of it thank you there you go okay most of the history is here but there's history throughout the whole ground what was the big water tank for water tank was this thing was run by whales and so you had to have holding tanks for storage water and then pumps pumping around the facility so that's sort of what that was sowing this grass for me in the infield getting it ready for august so he can have some grass standing up [Music] so you know later on they fixed this for a rescue station you know early on this was another this was one of the concession stands and you actually stood here in a long line order here so then later you know they moved it backwards and the concession stands back there and they had this area where you could eat and table set up so naturally you crowd what's standing out here in your crowd that makes sense so do you remember um standing in this line when it wasn't functional i do i remember coming down through here to see what kind of problem was going on so did you work at the track when it was working yes i actually grew up wound up working here and uh it was an awesome thing to do you know being able to come down when all of it was growing so so here's the winston suite up here another old building here come on later so this is where all the rj reynolds people pretty much stayed in here oh that's cool all the rj reynolds people were in here flossie johnson junior's wife would make sure everybody had a good time in here had food did you used to work for junior i said i worked for junior johnson till they closed in 1995 and we won the world pit crew championship in 1995 rockingham and uh got done with that and uh that really helped me i wound up i helped my friends at daryl waltrips for about three races and then i wound up coming to north wilkesboro that spring and changing tires for morgan mcclure on the four kodak film car sterling marlon was driving and did that for three years uh went to japan three times as you watched nascar at japan that we were over there had an awesome time and then about uh 2000 they were deciding to do a daryl walter farewell tour and wanted as many as those guys that worked at juniors could get back together so i wound up doing that no oh 2000 and 2001 and that's when i walked away no one wow so uh it's uh it's just so you were morgan mcclure and the the boom of the x-pipe yes yes sir and uh beat me to it yeah that's a brand new the brand new facility over there off of 81 just a humongous building beautiful man i mean it just it was something to behold and i just i told larry mcclure and ed and teddy and all those jury the brothers i said man this is a shame this is not in boone north carolina 30 minutes from my house you know i could work here forever but it was what it was and it just so this was the winston lambs then you went over here across the hall what are these little clips on these things for the clips on the uh like every seat has like a little that's where they held a car they had a car that went on there uh they had a little car that went on there that maybe told them about some things maybe yep maybe it had their name on it like a card with their name so they'd know where they were sitting yes this was this was winston people uh in this one this one was the president's plan and president being enoch staley uh down here you know this is where if you knew any staley then you could chances are get you a deal to come in here wasn't he a guy who built the track yes he's he was uh owner of the racetrack one of them one of the founders and uh you know just same thing he had a bar he had the food his wife mary uh cooked all the chicken for these boxes press and all on sundays they had homemade fried chicken and stuff that was cooked on property wasn't good oh man awesome fried chicken awesome and they loved it and also you know another thing that he did that was awesome is especially in the fall the brushy mountain apples come in so he made sure all press had a bag of apples sitting on there when the press come to town that's cool that was just something that happened here chicken apples things like that's how what made this place it's like hometown stuff oh yeah oh yeah that's really cool yep what is the lake up here just that real good padded carpet there's like an inch of cushion in here had a bale to get in you know had to ring a bale and they had to let you in if you had the right stuff they wouldn't let you in if you didn't ring the bell you want the right person you didn't get in so when your uncle paul was here for the last 20 years what what was his routine what did he do to keep this place together you know pretty much he run the weed eater he he mowed he done what he could do you know what i mean he it was a battle it was a battle to keep trash cans in these sweets before the leaks were and then finally the the battle overtook he couldn't keep the trash cans under the leaks and then the next thing you know he needs five trash cans and it's hard to get him over here and dump the water so was it just him doing it him only wow from 96 to 2010 then we got back in here in 2010 it was pretty decent you know and done some things but then from 2010 to now that's why it's got that's why you see what's going on right here wow so and then like i said these others are really don't need to go in them there's some more storage tanks uh pretty much pretty much talking about taking these last three down before the race in august just to make it safe so that's going to happen and uh are they going to keep the platforms and just take the buildings down keeping keeping the platforms keeping the still structure and and taking the buildings down and rebuild on well that's good yep sure enough and so good view from here good view from here good year building that's still going to be the goodyear building it's a it's a pretty awesome building and good euro operate out there or or a tire company preferably i'll say it's going to be good year so good year will operate out there this other building you see on the far end over there uh that will become the safety clean building okay and we'll have safety clean and fire issues going on in there with the fire departments and things and uh this was uh this brown building down here they're gonna keep it that was what everybody knew is the gas building that's where the cars the yellow islands you see down there that that's where the gas pumps was and so that's going to stay the gas building and the gas will still be right in that area in an above ground tank okay and uh so you know that's going to be that's going to be pretty awesome to see uh the gas tank come back and uh that be the gas building again a lot of memories in there for me a lot of a lot of deals were made in there by junior johnson and dale earnhardt senior made a lot of deals in that building building yes that little brown thing right there brown building lots of deals made in there lots lots and lots of deals why that thing it looks like you fit four guys in there it was just uh one of junior and enik's friends thurman brown he run the gas building for unicow and everybody wanted to go see thurman and then like i said it was just a good peaceful place to go in there for them old guys to tell some stories and the next thing you know here comes another guy in wanting to talk to junior about driving his car or working on the race team or whatever and lots of things went on lots of things went on in that building so have uh how's your endeavor getting the lift to work again good lift works as you can see we got it raised up we raised it all the way up the cylinders were submerged in water and i was afraid of that uh by them being submerged they're gonna have to be repacked and probably rebuilt but it works awesome it's an awesome lift we put power to it earlier this week and i went all the way up on it really i'm sure they documented some pictures but uh you know it's just that's a that's an awesome piece of the property also any wanted something that they were trying to think what we could do for to get up to victory lane so some of them already had a drive up victory lane at that time and and everything so what he done was got a local company here in town called lift bodies and lift bodies put beds like that on lowe's trucks lowe's home improvement warehouse now and that was a bed that was used to put uh roofing material up on a house really and so that's the same kind of idea that was on the truck back then and uh you know just just a really just a really awesome thing to think about right there how to raise that race car up open the gate roll it over at about…