How North Georgia Moonshine Runners Shaped NASCAR

Driver histories from Wikipedia; admission and hours from the Georgia Racing Hall of Fame and Dawsonville Pool Room websites.

The short version

Stock car racing grew out of Prohibition-era moonshine running across the Appalachians, and Dawsonville, Georgia, produced two of its earliest stars: Lloyd Seay and his cousin Roy Hall. NASCAR itself was founded on February 21, 1948, in Daytona Beach. You can trace the story an hour from Helen at the Georgia Racing Hall of Fame ($15 adults) and the Dawsonville Pool Room, both in Dawsonville.

Before there were grandstands and sponsors, there were mountain roads, fast cars and a lot of whiskey that needed delivering. NASCAR's history reaches back to that world, and one small Georgia town, an hour south of Helen, sits right in the middle of it.

Moonshine and fast cars

According to Wikipedia's NASCAR entry, stock car racing in the United States has its origins in bootlegging during Prohibition, when drivers ran whiskey made mostly in the Appalachian region. After Prohibition ended in 1933, some drivers kept running shine to evade tax officials, and their modified cars eventually became race cars. The races themselves became popular rural entertainment across the South.

North Georgia's version of the story centers on Dawson County. The roads were twisty, the hollows were remote, and the best drivers learned every curve of them. That's the kernel of truth behind a legend that's been polished for decades, and it's the part to keep in mind when you hear the bigger claims. Many places in the Appalachians share the same roots, so it's more accurate to say North Georgia helped create stock car racing than to say it created it alone.

A winding mountain road in North Georgia — The kind of curves that taught drivers what a car could do.

Lloyd Seay and Roy Hall

Two names stand out from Dawsonville. Lloyd Seay (born December 14, 1919) won a 150-mile national championship race at Lakewood Speedway in Atlanta in November 1938, and he took the Labor Day race at Lakewood on September 1, 1941. NASCAR founder Bill France Sr. later called him the best pure race driver he ever saw, according to Wikipedia. The morning after that Labor Day win, Seay's cousin Woodrow Anderson shot and killed him in a dispute over sugar that Seay had charged to Anderson's account. Seay was 21, and he was inducted into the Georgia Racing Hall of Fame in its first class, in 2002.

Roy Hall, Seay's cousin and teammate, was also born in Dawsonville. He's credited with national stock car championships in 1939, 1941 and 1945. His later life wasn't tidy: Wikipedia says he was convicted in a bank robbery near Atlanta and served about three years, from 1946 to 1949. After his release he raced in NASCAR's first Strictly Stock season in 1949, and he finished his driving career in 1960.

Two Dawsonville drivers
Driver	Known for	Notes
Lloyd Seay	Lakewood Speedway winner in 1938 and 1941	Died September 2, 1941, at 21; Georgia Racing Hall of Fame class of 2002
Roy Hall	Credited with national titles in 1939, 1941 and 1945	Seay's cousin; convicted in a 1940s bank robbery; raced into the 1950s and a last start in 1960

NASCAR is born

NASCAR was founded on February 21, 1948, at the Streamline Hotel in Daytona Beach, Florida, by Bill France Sr. with help from other drivers and promoters. Plenty of the sport's early drivers had learned their trade on back roads, and the culture of shine running carried over into the first race circuits. For a longer look at the whiskey side of the story, see our Moonshine Heritage Trail guide.

Visiting Dawsonville

Dawsonville is about an hour from Helen (roughly 40 miles by road) and works well as a half-day trip.

Stops in Dawsonville
Stop	Details
Georgia Racing Hall of Fame	415 GA Highway 53 East, Dawsonville, GA 30534; 706-216-7223. Open Monday to Saturday 10 AM to 5 PM and Sunday 1 to 5 PM; doors lock at 4:30 PM and it closes on holidays. Adults (15 to 54) $15, seniors 60+ and military $10, youth 7 to 14 $5, under 6 free. All on one level and ADA compliant.
Dawsonville Pool Room	9 Bill Elliott Street, Dawsonville, GA 30534; 706-265-2792. Open daily for lunch and dinner. On the town square since 1966, with racing memorabilia, hand-cut fries and a victory siren that sounds for every Chase Elliott win.

The siren tradition belongs to the Elliott family rather than to Seay's era: it started with Bill Elliott and continues with his son Chase. We tell the whole strange saga in the story of the Pool Room siren.

Make a day of it

Pair Dawsonville with the bootlegger's wreck near Amicalola Falls, a hike to an abandoned car deep in the woods. If you'd rather head east, Cornelia is an easy day trip from Helen. And for more on the region's lost places, read about the ghost town of Auraria or the Dawson Forest nuclear ruins. To see how Helen itself reinvented a struggling town, read how Helen painted itself saved.