In 1959, first Daytona 500 changed city, sport forever

[Mike]

The road running out of town was called Volusia Avenue, and it passed miles of stark emptiness on its crawl west from Daytona Beach. There was little development beyond a motel and a bar called Club 92. Engineers from General Electric would soon arrive to design parts for rockets being launched from Cape Canaveral, setting up shop near where NASCAR's offices are today. But as the 1950s drew to a close, these outskirts were the sleepiest side of a sleepy beachfront town. That is, until they set the bulldozers to work on the scrub and cypress swamp, and construction began on an edifice that would alter a city and a sport forever.

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