Heidelberg Raceway — Ghost Tracks

Heidelberg Raceway sat in Scott Township, a few miles southwest of Pittsburgh, and ran from 1948 to 1973. NASCAR's top series stopped by four times, and the first stop mattered: on October 2, 1949, Lee Petty won the 100-mile Strictly Stock race there in a Plymouth, the first win of his career. The tour came back in 1951, 1959 and 1960, and Petty took the last one too. The track hung on as a local bullring until the early 1970s, when the oil crisis, sprawl and a lease nobody could agree on shut it down. The ground that gave Lee Petty his first win has a Walmart and a Lowe's on it now.

Note: Opened 1948 as a half-mile dirt oval with a quarter-mile cut into the infield; both were paved before 1967. The four top-series races were won by Lee Petty (1949, 1960), Herb Thomas (1951) and Jim Reed (1959). Lee Petty's first-win claim and the closing causes come from Wikipedia and Bleacher Report; the shopping-center detail (Raceway Plaza) is Wikipedia only. Sources disagree on whether Sara Christian's fifth place in 1949 is still the best finish by a woman in the series, so the entry leaves it out..