The surprising NASCAR connection hidden in a RI shopping plaza

CUMBERLAND – What is now a shopping plaza that includes a Stop & Shop and a McDonald's holds a noted place in American auto racing history: It is the site of the first sanctioned stock car race in the United States outside the South.

Not only would the first stock car races in the North be held in Cumberland, but the national championship would be decided there.

On Oct. 26, 1947, Fonty Flock, of Atlanta, won the national championship race on the one-third-mile, high-banked, paved oval track of the Lonsdale Sports Arena off Mendon Road on the bank of the Blackstone River, just downstream from Pratt Dam.

A crowd of 18,000 watched the seven races that Sunday afternoon, part of a program sanctioned by National Stock Car Circuit head Bill France, who, a couple of months later, would become head of the newly formed NASCAR, the governing body of stock car auto racing.

Only days before the history-making auto races, Lonsdale Sports Arena made history in another sport: The bowl-shaped arena hosted 32,000 spectators in what was the largest football crowd ever in Rhode Island at that time, as Cranston High School beat La Salle Academy, 20-2. The huge crowd snarled traffic for hours in the area.

Edward A. McNulty, a Pawtucket contractor, bought the site in 1934 and used it to mine sand and gravel for his road-building business. In 1947, he built the track to host midget-car races. Two years later, McNulty won Lincoln Town Council approval to open a drive-in movie theater in Lonsdale, just across the Blackstone River from his race track.

While the late 1940s were the heyday for the race track, it was doomed to a life of less than a decade. Being so close to the Blackstone River meant the track was prone to flooding. It closed in 1956.

And, although Bill France sanctioned the first stock car races at Lonsdale months before founding NASCAR, no record could be found of a NASCAR-sanctioned race ever being held there.

This story first published July 16, 2025.

This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: The surprising NASCAR connection hidden in a RI shopping plaza