It’s no secret that stock car racing has its roots dug deep into North Carolina. What began as running moonshine from the law in the North Carolina mountains has turned into the $600+ million business it is today. But there’s another form of racing that was once popular in the North Carolina mountains that not many people know about. In fact, I had never heard of it until visiting Chimney Rock State Park a few months ago, and I’ve been a resident of the state my entire life. This annual event was called the Chimney Rock Hill Climb.

The Chimney Rock Hill climb began in 1956 and took place in the park it received its name from, Chimney Rock. The Morse family, owners of the park, worked with the Sports Car Club of America (the country’s top organization for amateur racing) to make this a possibility. Now, if you’re unfamiliar with what a hill climb race is, as I was, it differs from a typical race in that the drivers are not racing alongside other drivers at the same time. Instead, you are competing against the clock. Starting from the bottom of the hill, drivers race to the top, one at a time, to post the fastest possible time. Then the next driver goes. Perhaps the most popular hill climb race in the country was the Pike’s Peak Hill Climb in Colorado, but during its peak years, the Chimney Rock Hill climb rivaled in popularity.

On April 29, 1956, the first Chimney Rock Hill Climb took place. The Morse family saw it as a great way to open up the tourist season in their park and decided to dedicate an entire weekend to it every year in April. The initial course, which lasted four years, was 2.7 miles in length. It started where the park’s main entrance is now located and ended up at the parking lot near the top of the mountain. This was also the longest the course ever was. It was fully paved and contained 18 hairpin turns for the drivers to navigate on their way to the top. During these years, the fastest times were all between the 4-to-4.5-minute mark.

Beginning in 1960, the course was reduced nearly an entire mile, to a length of 1.9 miles. The part of the course that was cut was the beginning, which was definitely the easier portion. The most challenging portion was the latter half with its hair-raising, sharp turns. Reducing the length of the track, along with the number of hairpin turns from 18 to 13, allowed the fastest drivers to post times in the 2-to-2.5 minute range. At one point it seemed impossible to the drivers, but eventually the best ones would break the two-minute mark in the early 1970s.

In 1976, a few minor changes were made to increase safety on the course, reducing the length to 1.8 miles. No turns were taken out that time. This was also the version of the track that lasted the longest, until the final race in 1995.

Drivers from all over the eastern part of the country would come to Chimney Rock park, along with their best cars, to attempt to post the fastest time and become crowned as “The King of the Hill.” Of course there were many local entrants, but they were challenged by outsiders who wanted to prove they had the fastest cars. “Every year a big group from Ohio would come. There was another group from Georgia, and another from Florida,” said Jan Davis, who was a regular competitor in the hill climb. Many weekends, there would be over 100 competitors looking to take home the crown.

With that many drivers, however, it should be no surprise that all the cars were not created equal. Therefore, drivers had to be divided into different classes based on their car’s engine size and modification from factory condition. Times were compiled according to each class, but only one driver would take home the “King of the Hill” title. And that was the one with the fastest overall time.

Many of the drivers spent the entire year working and tinkering with their cars, to try to get it set up just right for the Chimney Rock mountain. They would test their results out while racing at other tracks. “You wanted as much horsepower and as little weight as possible when building your car,” says John Finger, another regular competitor and also a 12-time King of the Hill champion. No detail would go unnoticed when building the car, no matter how small. He even got a job at a local Austin-Healey dealership to get better prices on car parts in preparation for his races on the hill.

The more times Finger raced the track, the better he got to know it, therefore the better he would have his car set up for the following year. “I remember one year,” he recalled, “the Audi team showed up with one of their rally cars and a famous driver.” With intentions on dominating the field of amateur drivers, Finger fondly recalls them going home at the end of the weekend with nothing to show for it. “That car wasn’t right for the hill.”

For as much fun as the drivers had each year attempting to post the fastest time, it may have been the spectators who loved the atmosphere the most. Every year, huge crowds would gather around the action. They came to see the nice-looking sports cars, interact with the drivers, and set up blankets and cheer on the action all weekend long. There would be people watching from the treetops, as well as several feet alongside the track where the cars would race right on by them. Many times some of the spectators would be recruited into a pit crew, helping the driver hone their car from Friday and Saturday (the qualifying portion of the weekend) to Sunday (the championship day).

The most surprising thing of it all was that no one ever got seriously hurt in all of the event’s 50 years. Racing up the side of a mountain with that many hairpin turns and no guard rails, you would think would have been a recipe for disaster. That’s not to say that drivers didn’t sometime go off the edge, though. Jan Davis remembers seeing one driver, Whit Fairer, and his Honda CRX go over the side of one of the turns. “He later told me that he suddenly felt the steering wheel go loose in his hands, like the front tires weren’t touching the ground anymore.” Fairer braced himself for the inevitable fall and wound up in a thicket below. Incredibly, he wasn’t harmed and his car was hauled out. Fairer was far from the only one to go over the edge, but like him, everyone seemed to get out of their cars without much injury.

With popularity of the race beginning to wane in the late 1980s and early 90s, it felt like perhaps the end was near for the Chimney Rock Hill Climb. Liability concerns were becoming more and more present, along with complaints from other tourists about environmental concerns and wanting to keep the park purely as a place to take in the beauty of the natural environment. Many tourists had complained over the years, but their complaints started to get louder and louder. By 1995, it was decided by the Morse family that it would be their last year to host the event, and it would perfectly cap off a 50-year reign.

For one more weekend, the huge crowd would gather to cheer on the racers as they attempted to be crowned the king one last time. Once Sunday rolled around, which was usually reserved for the top qualifying drivers, it was decided that every single driver that showed up would get one final run. After they all made it to the top one last time, they all parked their cars in the parking lot and shared stories of races over the years, before lining up to slowly make their way back down the mountain in front of a cheering crowd. The Chimney Rock Hill Climb had created so many great memories for countless drivers throughout the years that I’m sure Jan Davis isn’t alone when he stated, “Every once in a while I still drive that course in my imagination.”

Garett

King Of The Hill: The Chimney Rock Hill Climb