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Hamilton buys hometown racetrack
Bobby Hamilton Jr. has bought Highland Rim Speedway, a quarter-mile racetrack located in Ridgetop, 20 miles north of Nashville.
He said the purchase is partly from the heart and partly from the head.
“It’s a little bit sentimental in addition to being a business move,” he said of his decision to acquire the 46-year-old track.
“The first race I ever saw was at Highland Rim, where my dad started racing,” said Hamilton, 31, whose late father got his start at the little track and went on to NASCAR stardom.
“That track has always meant a lot to our family,” said Hamilton, who lives in Greenbrier, a few miles from the racetrack. “In fact, a few years ago my dad and I thought about buying it, but the timing wasn’t right.”
One of the factors that made Hamilton decide that the timing is better now is the closure of Fairgrounds Speedway. Hundreds of Nashville-area drivers and thousands of fans will be without a track next year.
“The interest in racing hasn’t died,” Hamilton said. “I believe I can make this work.”
Hamilton plans to open the season in mid-March and in the meantime will schedule organizational meetings with drivers and team owners.
Information will be posted on the track’s Web site, www.highlandrimspeedway.com
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Thank goodness Karl Dean can't touch Highland Rim. Congrats Bobby and good luck with what I expect will be an expanded group of racers and fans if we can't save the Fairgrounds Speedway. It does seem strange that the railroad museum in Chattanooga can get a steam locomotive on the national register of historic places but we can't do the same for a speedway with the history that ours has.
Good for Bobby and best wishes for success.
Whats the capacity up there? Like to see some old timer races , we have enough of them in the area to make it a happening.
DW would love to get behind the wheel again, lol
I wish he could make the track a little bigger, not sure how much land it sits on. idgaf, But, I think Stevie might let DW run on the quarter mile every now and then. LOL!
WayneJ-- actually we've been trying to get the Fairgrounds listed on the historic register... although that would not offer complete protection.
But the problem is that the historic register is tied to 'buildings' more than anything else-- and they want *original* buildings.. they won't list a piece of real estate, just because it's historic (that's why there are "historic battlefield" locations for instance-- they don't qualify for the actual historic register).
However, the biggest problem is that in 1965, a fire totally wiped out the fairgrounds, taking with it the historic grandstand, women's building, etc. And of course John Rains' blockhouse was long gone. if you're not aware, the fairgrounds is the largest remaining piece of the original nashboro settlement. It was originally a 640 acre land grant to John Rains for his service as a soldier of the Revolution. He was part of the James Robinson party who crossed the Cumberland to found Fort Nashboro (nashville). He had a defensive blockhouse down on brown's creek, near the nolensville entrance to the fairgrounds.
But the historic register will list a "reproduction" of a historic building if it's on the original site. For instance, much is made of the Parthenon at Centennial Park, and it's being on the historical register. However, that's NOT the original Parthenon that was built for the Centennial Exposition in 1897. That one was plaster, and pretty rickkety and ragged by all accounts.
However, in 1920, and extending for the next 11 years-- it was rebuilt out of concrete so that it would be a permanent structure. That's the building on the historic register.
When the grandstand burned along with the rest of the fairgrounds, the fools at the fair board rebuilt everything cheaply, and apparently frittered away the insurance money instead of accurately replacing the buildings.
One of our projects-- if we can save the fairgrounds-- is to find sponsors who will rebuild the grandstand, at least, to the way it was when it was built around 1890.
We have pictures of it from back then, and a 3-D model of it has been constructed as it was around 1910.
Hopefully, if this gets done, it would then qualify for the National Register of Historic Places, just like the reproduction of the reproduction of the Parthenon.
with the demise of starwood,and,they used to have concerts at the racetrack,why not again?