Seeing Texas World Speedway Being Devoured by Housing Development Is Real Sad

And then there was none. Updated satellite imagery shows what little remains of the old Texas World Speedway. Just six years after its closing, suburbia has fully seeped into the speedway’s silhouette.  Not to be confused with the similarly named Texas Motor Speedway in Fort Worth, the defunct Texas World Speedway was located in College Station. The motorsports venue in East-Central Texas opened in 1969 and included a two-mile oval track as well as several road course configurations.  Texas World Speedway was one of only eight superspeedways in the U.S. Other superspeedways, such as Indianapolis, Daytona, Pocono, Talledega, and Michigan International, are still operational. Auto Club and Ontario, both based in Southern California, experienced the same fate as Texas World and have since closed. Google Earth In its heyday, Texas World Speedway played host to pro races from IndyCar and NASCAR, amateur races via SCCA, NASA, and the Porsche Club of America, driving schools, and music concerts. It later fell into disrepair in the 1980s and dropped from racing schedules, but was still used for testing. The track experienced a resurgence in 2012, but that, too, was shortlived. By the time Hurricane Harvey made landfall as a Category 4 hurricane in 2017, Texas World was closed and used as a holding station for thousands of flooded cars pending insurance claims. Quick to seize the sizable land, developers broke ground less than a year later on a residential neighborhood now called Southern Pointe. Today, the master-planned community covers more than half of the former oval track.  Google Earth Developers say more than 2,000 homes will be built on the speedway site, eventually overtaking it completely. The community will connect to more than 100 acres of parks and open space as well as have nearly 35 acres dedicated to a business and entertainment district. For about 200 grand, it doesn’t sound like the worst place to be.  Besides, even if all visual reminders of Texas World Speedway are gone, developers have made it a point to recount the area’s motorsports history in promotional items—which is better than the fates of other failed race tracks where even their ghosts are forgotten