Historic stock car race at Rhode Island site predates formal NASCAR governance
The Lonsdale Sports Arena, now a commercial plaza, was the location of a pivotal event in American auto racing history, though historical records do not confirm it was officially sanctioned by the governing body Bill France established shortly thereafter.
The site of a modern shopping plaza in Cumberland, Rhode Island, is the location of the first sanctioned stock car race held in the United States outside the South. On 26 October 1947, the Lonsdale Sports Arena hosted a national championship race that was sanctioned by Bill France, who would go on to become the head of the newly formed National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing (NASCAR) a few months later.
Fonty Flock of Atlanta won the national championship race at the venue, which featured a one-third-mile, high-banked, paved oval track. A crowd of 18,000 spectators attended the seven-race programme on that Sunday afternoon. The event took place at a facility located off Mendon Road on the bank of the Blackstone River, just downstream from Pratt Dam.
The venue’s significance in regional sports history extends beyond motorsport. Earlier in 1947, the arena hosted a high school football match between Cranston High School and La Salle Academy. Cranston won the match 20-2 in front of 32,000 spectators, setting a record for the largest football crowd in Rhode Island at that time. The attendance caused traffic to snarl for hours in the area.
Edward A. McNulty, a Pawtucket contractor, purchased the site in 1934 for sand and gravel mining to support his road-building business. He constructed the track in 1947 to host midget-car races before the stock car event. Despite the high-profile nature of the October race, no record exists of a NASCAR-sanctioned race ever being held at Lonsdale, creating a distinction between the event being sanctioned by France personally and being officially under the NASCAR banner.
The Lonsdale Sports Arena had a short operational lifespan due to its proximity to the Blackstone River, which made the venue prone to flooding. It closed permanently in 1956. The site is now occupied by a shopping plaza containing a Stop & Shop and a McDonald's. The original reporting on this history was published by The Providence Journal and later republished by Yahoo Sports.
