Groovy Hollow is an annual iRacing fundraiser event created by Out of the Groove and A.E. Engine to raise money for Victory Junction.
Written by Jerome Straub
Every track, past, present, and future, has a story to tell–a storied history with some legendary moments and legendary winners. Since its inception in 1949, 179 unique speedways and tracks have been featured on the NASCAR circuit across its many distinctive series. Today, only 53 of those still remain on the schedule across all of NASCAR’s divisions, while the others often waste away. Some get sold to real estate developers. They get turned into condos or a Walmart or a parking lot or a shopping mall. Others get left to ruin, a painful reminder of their former glory. And some get torn down in order to build a new short track but never reach beyond the blueprint and/or good idea phase of planning. But sometimes, they came back from the dead…and for those tracks, their storied pasts are haunted and shrouded in darkness.
My name in Jerome Straub and I’m stepping in today for this entry of Forgotten Speedways to tell you the true story of the infamous Groovy Hollow Raceway. The track opened in 1951 was Maple Grove Raceway Park. Auto racing was still fairly new at the time, especially in terms of NASCAR. The track was located to the northeast of Bristol Motor Speedway in the sleepy little town of Commonwealth, Virginia.
And that original track saw a plethora of drivers come and go. Some of these ancient heroes went on to become NASCAR greats while others tragically lost their lives at the track, giving it a haunted reputation. But the track as well know it today didn’t become Groovy Hollow until the 1990s, when its undisputed master took the reins and began his reign of terror. For this installment of Forgotten Speedways, submitted for your approval, this is the tale of Groovy Hollow Raceway.
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The original Groovy Hollow Raceway was founded in 1951 as Maple Grove Speedway by Mr. John Teague. In those days, and for the first several of the track’s operations, the track operated as a dirt track for professional and hobby drivers alike to turn laps and hone their craft in friendly competition. But Mr. Teague got sick in the summer of 1963 of an undisclosed illness. He passed not long thereafter and the track, for a while, went into ruin. That was until his daughter, Beverly Fischer, took over the reins with her partner, Bonnie and revitalized the facility. The track reopened in 1986, under much scrutiny concerning the new ownership.
All of that unpleasantness, however, was laid to race once racing returned to the facility for the first time in just over 20 years. Financially, things were always a bit shaky for the two owners but, they survived. For a while. But, by 1991, Bev and Bonnie were looking to get out of the business altogether. Therefore, they sold their share of the track and retired to New Hampshire, where they lived the remainder of their lives.
This is where the true story of the Groovy Hollow Raceway truly begins. Because, despite the presence of the track before, it didn’t really become Groovy Hollow until 1990, when Bucky Blackwell, driving his infamous No. 31 Halloween Machine, started to compete at the track.
Throughout the 1990s, Bucky Blackwell dominated the track, winning 9 of the 10 track titles of the decade. In fact, in order to cash in on the sheer dominance of these mysterious drivers, the new ownership group opted to cash in on the opportunity as they renamed the facility as Groovy Hollow Raceway. Jokingly, they said things like “it’s the track that Bucky Blackwell built”, or “home of the Halloween Machine’s reign of terror”. During that decade of dominance, only one driver was ever able to beat Blackwell at his own game. That person was Harrison McGrawk, driver of the No. 72 unsponsored Chevy. But, after his slaying of Blackwell in 1996, he was never heard from again. He abruptly stopped racing and became something of a recluse. We’ve reached out to his family but they declined to comment.
During the 2000 running of the race, when Bucky was going for his 10th win in the annual Groovy Hollow 300, disaster in the form of lightning struck. A bolt of lightning split the black cosmos and streaked across the night sky. It touched down on the roof of Blackwell’s Halloween Machine, which then spun out of control and made hard contact with the outside wall. When safety workers rushed to see if Blackwell was okay, he, and his mysterious Halloween Machine were gone.
In the wake of this tragic mystery, Groovy Hollow fell out of favor. Fans stopped attended races and, quietly during the 2005 season after years of dwindling fields, the track finally collapsed on its wobbly last legs. Subsequently, the track was abandoned and left to ruin until, one day, it just disappeared. Only to miraculously reappear in 2021, in the same exact location of Commonwealth, Virginia. But the track didn’t return alone; with it returned Groovy Hollow’s greatest champion, Bucky Blackwell himself.
Between the years of 2021 and 2024, some strange happenings have been reported to come out of the facility. In 2021, 2022, and 2023, Bucky Blackwell retained his dominant streak. That was until 2024 when, against all odds, Blackwell was slain yet again by an unlikely driver named Tommie Jo Swanson. Nobody knows for certain what happened on the night of Tommie’s win in the Groovy Hollow 300. Reports vary. But, as it was reported in The Nowhere Chronicles, it is believed that after this humiliation, Bucky Blackwell and the track vanished yet again.
Now, in 2025, the track seems to have reappeared, albeit in a different location. Now in Georgia, the Groovy Hollow Raceway now sits on the graveyard of another dead, long-forgotten track under a new configuration. And it is presumed that Bucky Blackwell is back as well, scratching and clawing from his crypt, knocking the dirt off that Tommie Jo Swanson packed him in one year ago.
The original configuration of the Maple Grove Speedway was a lot like that of Martinsville. It had two drag strips for straightaways, bookended by a couple of U-turns to create a paperclip shape. However, shortly before being rebranded as Groovy Hollow Raceway, before Bucky Blackwell’s reign of terror, the track got a facelift. The corners were widened and the frontstretch received tri-oval treatment, creating a D-shaped oval similar to Richmond. The frontstretch was banked at 8 degrees, the backstretch at 2 degrees, and the turns on either end of the track were shallowly banked at 14 degrees. When the track returned in 2021, it held this shape and continued under this configuration until the track’s disappearance in 2024.
When the track resurfaced in the summer of 2025, it had relocated to Stone Castle, Georgia. It had also been reconfigured to mimic the original shape and size of the dead Old Stone Castle Speedway. This configuration saw a dramatic decrease in banking and straightaway length. Rather than resembling a D, the track looked more like an O–stretching out into a continuous turn.
A number of different series have taken to the track, especially when it was still going under the Maple Grove banner. Various USAC and ARCA divisions have raced at the track in years past. But, when the ’90s rolled around the world was facing a new millennium, the series that, for all intents and purposes, took over the track was the American Southern Late Model Stock Tour. A series championship was developed in 1988 for the track and the rest, as they say, is history.
Bucky Blackwell is, by far, the greatest driver to ever touch the asphalt at Groovy Hollow. Since rising to prominence in the early 1990s, he has countless wins at the facility, including 9 track championships and 12 victories in the Groovy Hollow 300. He is going for win number Lucky 13 in 2025.
Other notable winners include those who disrupted Blackwell’s dominance at the track. Those drivers are the presumably late Harrison McGrawk and defending race winner, Tommie Jo Swanson.
The future of the track is pretty much left a mystery. With the track’s strange relocation and phantom reconfiguration this year, it is unknown what shape the track may take in the future if or when it returns. In 2025, though, the track is shaped like an O and is considered one of the most dangerous tracks on the circuit. It is still active, back from the dead. But, for how long?
Jerome Straub is a graduate of Carson College, near Newport, Tennessee, and grew up in the neighboring town of Deweytown, Tennessee. His writings have appeared in many journals, most of them dealing with the occult. He is a frequent contributor to the paper The Nowhere Chronicles. His books include The True Ghosts series, most notably The True Ghosts of Jonesborough and The True Ghosts of Williamsburg, as well as the novel, The Dead Travel Fast. He’s currently at work on his latest entry in the True Ghosts franchise, a collection of ghost legends from the small Tennessee town of Whisperwood.
