Eldora Speedway is the Grand Dirt Dance Hall where an old, forgotten America isn't just a memory.

The road to Eldora Speedway does not pass through Troy, Ohio, but it damn sure runs straight through the heart of Troy’s favorite racing son, Jack Hewitt.

- BONES BOURCIER 

Few drivers got around the half-mile dirt oval the way Jack did, and no one attacked its steeply banked turns as aggressively. Eldora is no place for timidity, and there has never been anything timid about Hewitt.

Hewitt’s faithful fans had a verse about their hero’s penchant for high-testosterone outside passes: “Jack Hewitt rides high, ’cause he ain’t afraid to die.”

He was the star of perhaps the most celebrated night in the track’s history (we’ll get to that), and these days, he’s retired but still rowdy at age 71. Hewitt remains everyone’s go-to Eldora authority. Ask him what makes the joint so special, and he says, “For the fans, every big race there is a happening. Everybody’s heard that old saying, ‘I went to a fight, and a hockey game broke out.’ At Eldora, you go to a party, and a race breaks out.

“And as a driver you like it because you can finish 20th and still feel like you’ve done something. If you ran the whole feature with your right-rear tire six inches from the concrete, and you didn’t crash, you had a heck of a night.”

ELDORA OWES ITS EXISTENCE to the late Earl Baltes and its staying power to Tony Stewart. Different men from different times, they shared a stubbornness and a flair for the dramatic.

Baltes was a bandleader and dance-hall operator. Sometime after World War II, a Sunday drive took him past a crowded dirt track in the next county. Curious, he bought a ticket, watched the jalopies run, and found his calling.