Ghost of South Carolina Dirt Track Reappears on Google Maps After Decades

Dirt tracks aren’t as common as they used to be across the southern United States. So many of the county locales that once offered cheap thrills have been shut down and are being actively reclaimed by nature. One dusty oval in Woodruff, South Carolina, was such a track, though recently captured Google Maps images show it’s been cleared of the trees and weeds that dominated it for decades. The reason why is anybody’s guess.

The outline of what was formerly Confederate Motor Speedway is now easily visible from the sky. It first opened as a quarter-mile track back in 1950, though it shuttered after just a few years. Organizers revived it in the ’70s by turning it into a three-fifth-mile track, and it hosted regular activity until 1989. A few one-off events followed, before the padlock was put on for good.

I’d heard of the facility before and I vaguely remember reading a Jalopnik blog about its overgrown state a few years ago. That story features a boots-on-the-ground video tour by the YouTube channel S1apSh0es in 2021, showing what looked like the track’s final state. Somebody mentioned its reappearance in one of my favorite Facebook groups—Retired Race Cars and Abandoned Race Tracks—just last week, so I decided to investigate.

I was curious to learn exactly when the land was cleared. Some commenters on the original post said it was mostly free of trees a year ago when they visited, giving me good reason to question the timeline. While Google Maps wasn’t all that helpful, we punched the coordinates into The Drive‘s handy-dandy paid satellite service to find these photos:

It looks like clearing began in late 2022. You can see the difference from November 18 to November 29 of that year, with lots more dirt visible in the latter photo. By December 18, you can clearly make out the track’s outline as well as the infield.

It’s not exactly surprising that the landowner would clear this parcel, but why would they clear it specifically and nothing else? I don’t mean to be a Negative Nancy but I seriously doubt it’s being reopened as a racing venue. Locals commented that city and county officials all but choked it out with “racing bans,” while the embedded YouTube video says it was a zoning conflict. Either way, it would likely be tough to overcome and without proper legal protections, it wouldn’t make sense to put that much money into a racetrack whose existence depends on loud cars and fans.

I’d love to learn more about what’s going on here. If you or someone you know has connections to this property, please do reach out to me. Or, if you just want to reminisce about the old days at a dirt track in South Carolina, I’m cool with that, too.

Got a tip or question for the author? Contact them directly: caleb@thedrive.com