Geography and climateĪccording to the U.S. However, in May 2011, the group announced that funding had fallen through and they were ending their lease prematurely. Speedway Associates, Inc., obtained a three-year lease and started running races and other events at the speedway. Two new owners, Bob Bahre and Bruton Smith, moved North Wilkesboro's NASCAR races to their tracks in Texas and New Hampshire. The North Wilkesboro Speedway was closed following the 1996 NASCAR season. Benny Parsons and Jimmy Pardue were two other notable NASCAR drivers from Wilkes. Wolfe's vivid article was later adapted as the movie The Last American Hero (1973), starring Jeff Bridges and Valerie Perrine. Johnson was featured by the writer Tom Wolfe in a 1965 article for Esquire magazine titled "The Last American Hero Is Junior Johnson. The North Wilkesboro Speedway was the first NASCAR (National Association of Stock Car Auto Racing) track it held its first race on Wilkes County native and resident Junior Johnson was one of the early superstars of NASCAR, as well as a legendary moonshiner. Since this often involved outrunning local police and federal agents in auto chases, the county became one of the birthplaces of the sport of stock-car racing. Many Wilkes County distillers ran white liquor as far as Detroit, New Jersey and South Florida. Wilkes County natives also used bootleg liquor as a means for barter far beyond the borders of North Carolina. From the 1920s to the 1950s some young Wilkes County males made their living by delivering moonshine to North Carolina's larger towns and cities. Wilkes County was once known as the " Moonshine Capital of the World", and was a leading producer of illegal homemade liquor. Numerous boundary adjustments were made thereafter, but none resulted in new counties. In 1849 additional parts of Wilkes County and Caldwell County were combined with parts of Ashe County and Yancey County to form Watauga County. In 1847 another part of Wilkes County was combined with parts of Caldwell County and Iredell County to become Alexander County. In 1841 parts of Wilkes County and Burke County were combined to form Caldwell County. In 1799 the northern and western parts of Wilkes County became Ashe County.
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