The Rockingham Speedway — known for decades as the North Carolina Speedway and to everyone who followed it as "The Rock" — is the town's most recognizable landmark and the reason most visitors have heard of Rockingham at all. The one-mile oval hosted NASCAR Cup Series races from 1965 to 2004, a stretch that gave the track a well-deserved reputation as one of the most demanding on the circuit.
After NASCAR pulled its Cup race in 2004 — a move that remains contentious in this part of North Carolina — the track went through several ownership changes and periods of inactivity before stabilizing as a venue for lower-series NASCAR races, karting, and occasional special events. It is not the grand stage it once was, but the facility still operates and the grandstands still fill for race weekends. For anyone interested in American motorsport history, standing in those grandstands and looking out over the track where Petty, Earnhardt, and Yarborough battled for four decades is genuinely evocative.