Most people walking Main Street past the Charles Mack Citizen Center step right over them: a row of round metal markers set flush into the concrete, each one stamped with a name, a number, and a year. They don't announce themselves. There's no velvet rope, no admission fee, no gift shop attached to the sidewalk itself. You'd have to already know what you're looking at, or stop and read one, to realize you're standing in the middle of the North Carolina Auto Racing Walk of Fame.
That's been true since 2009, when the town unveiled the project with Richard Petty, Bobby Allison, and Junior Johnson walking the same two blocks at the same time to see their names go into the concrete. Seventeen years later, most of downtown treats the markers the way you'd treat a familiar crack in the pavement. On October 6, that changes, at least for one evening. The sidewalk gets two new names, and the town is throwing the kind of free street party that makes it worth actually stopping to look down.
Eighteen Markers, Not a Museum
Here's the detail that trips people up: the Walk of Fame and the North Carolina Auto Racing Hall of Fame are two different things standing near each other. The Hall of Fame is the indoor museum, founded in 1994 by Don Miller, the former president of Penske Racing, and it holds more than 40 vehicles on loan from donors, ranging from go-karts to full stock cars, some dating back to the 1940s. Getting in costs $6 for adults and $4 for kids and anyone over 55, though the gift shop is free to browse, and the museum keeps limited hours, closed Wednesdays and Sundays with a shorter day on Saturdays.
The Walk of Fame is the free part. It's the sidewalk display the Hall of Fame built and maintains along Main Street, near the Citizen Center, currently holding 18 markers honoring inductees going back to the sport's early decades. You don't need a ticket, a schedule, or even a plan. You need to be walking through downtown on an ordinary day, which most residents already are.
Why a Steering Wheel Instead of a Star
The design itself has a specific origin, and it says something about how the whole project got built. When the town first put the markers together, the obvious move would have been a star, the same shorthand every other walk of fame in the country uses. Richard Petty said no. He wanted something that actually meant racing, not celebrity, so the markers went with a circular design meant to evoke a steering wheel instead. Petty ended up spending more time than any other inductee that first day signing autographs and posing for photos, which is its own small detail about how a seven-time champion treats a hometown sidewalk unveiling.
Each marker carries the driver's name, a photo, their year of induction, and their career win total. It's a compact biography in a five-inch circle, meant to be read standing up, mid-walk, on the way to somewhere else.
Two New Names Join the Sidewalk on October 6
As Iredell Free News reported, on Tuesday, October 6, from 4 to 7 p.m., Main Street closes to regular traffic for the Mooresville Motorsports Celebration, and at 5 p.m. the Hall of Fame formally inducts two new names into the Walk of Fame: Dale Jarrett and Ron Hornaday Jr.
Jarrett's résumé is the kind that fills a marker on its own. He won the 1999 NASCAR Cup Series championship, took the Daytona 500 three times (1993, 1996, and 2000), and finished his driving career with 32 Cup Series victories. Hornaday's case is built on a different kind of dominance: four NASCAR Truck Series championships, in 1996, 1998, 2007, and 2009, which still stands as the record for the most Truck Series titles by any driver, along with 51 series wins. He was inducted into the NASCAR Hall of Fame in 2018.
Don Miller, who chairs the Hall of Fame's board, put the honor plainly: Jarrett and Hornaday represent talent, integrity, and dedication, and the town is thrilled to recognize their legacies in the place where motorsports history lives and thrives. That's not just ceremonial language. Mooresville earned the Race City USA nickname because of the racing shops, teams, and drivers who actually live and work here, not because of a marketing campaign, and the induction ceremony is one of the few moments a year when that identity gets a public street event instead of just a bumper sticker.
Around the ceremony, the town builds out the rest of the evening with a classic car show and food trucks lining Main Street, all free and open to walk through. It's the kind of event that rewards showing up without a plan more than showing up on time for a specific moment.
How to Actually See It
If you want the full evening, the details are simple:
- Date: Tuesday, October 6, 2026
- Time: 4 to 7 p.m., with the induction ceremony at 5 p.m.
- Location: Main Street, Downtown Mooresville, near the Charles Mack Citizen Center
- Cost: Free
- What's there: Classic car show, food trucks, and the Walk of Fame induction
If Tuesday evening doesn't work, the markers themselves aren't going anywhere. They sit on Main Street between Moore Avenue and Iredell Avenue, within easy reach of Hebrews Coffee for something to drink beforehand or Bob's Grill if you want to make a meal of the stop. Reading all 18, soon to be 20, takes less time than waiting for a table on a Saturday morning, and it's the rare downtown attraction that costs nothing and never requires a reservation.
What makes the Walk of Fame worth an actual stop, rather than another daily step-over, is that it's one of the few places in town where Mooresville's identity as Race City USA shows up as something you can read with your own eyes instead of something you just hear about. The shops and race teams that gave the town its nickname mostly operate behind closed doors. The sidewalk in front of the Citizen Center is the one place that history sits in the open, free, permanent, and two names longer after October 6.
If you're new to the area and want a longer list of the corners of Mooresville worth a second look, Juliet Thomas has spent years learning which ones are worth the detour. Let's Connect.
