Don’t let progress help Hell House, Adam Hartle’s legacy fade

I stood on the corners of Plymouth Street and Lenox Avenue in the Westside of Jacksonville Monday and tried to imagine what the intersection looked like 60 years ago.

Back then, a half-mile dirt track was cut in a thicket of tall pines and mossy oaks. Stock car fans filled crude wooden bleachers to watch their favorite drivers like Willie Carter and LeeRoy Yarbrough. They drank beer and threw chicken bones toward the speeding cars.

Speedway Park is where Wendell Scout became the first Black driver to win a NASCAR race. It happened in 1963 during the height of the civil rights movement. Officials originally declared Buck Baker the winner, but they changed their minds two hours after reviewing scorecards. By then, the crowd had gone home. So did the white race queen, so there were no Victory Lane photos or celebrations.

Scott got the $1,000 winner’s check, but he never got the trophy. Sixty years later, the official trophy has never been located.

Speedway Park closed in 1973. Jacksonville was growing, and the land was too valuable to be used on occasional weekends.

The track also is where Lynyrd Skynyrd frontman Ronnie Van Zant sat in a tree outside the track on Saturday nights, watching Yarbrough carve through traffic.

Now it’s gone, replaced by apartments. Some call it progress. I call it disappointing because the bulldozers also plowed over the property’s historical significance.

There are no plaques or markers at the site, and memories continue to fade as drivers and fans from that era pass away.

Adam Hartle didn’t like to see legacies being covered by concrete. That’s why he bought the lot where Lynyrd Skynyrd mastered their brand of Southern Rock in a small shack in the Green Cove Springs woods.

The woods have been transformed into a 158-lot housing development off County Road 209. Docks now crowd the southern side of Peter’s Creek.

No matter how much they build around Hell House, the hallowed grounds where “Free Bird” and “Sweet Home Alabama” were created will only have a few trees, sand, patches of grass and a rickety dock where Van Zant used to fish and find musical inspiration.

“Jacksonville is changing. Listen to the song, ‘Every Mother’s Son,’ and its lyrics, man, ‘I can see the concrete creeping.’ And it’s true, there are dump trucks everywhere, and it’s erasing Jacksonville’s and the band’s history,” Hartle once said.

Despite some pushback from Edgewater residents who feared their

community would become a tourist stop, Hartle installed a historical marker to ensure Hell House’s legacy wouldn’t be eroded by time.

It proved to be his dying wish.

The 43-year-old comedian died of a heart attack while the marker was being created.

Along with five students from Florida State and marker installer Tim Fillmon, Bob Kealing and I carried out Adam’s wishes last weekend. Hartle’s wife called me when the marker was delivered and I picked it up last week. We met at the site and installed it facing Peter’s Creek near the dock.

It can’t be seen from the street so Edgewater residents – some who live on streets like Free Bird Loop, Southern Oaks Drive and Tuesday’s Cove – won’t be disturbed.

Bob and I decided not to make a big deal about the marker. Neither of us mentioned it on our social media pages. But it didn’t take long for somebody to take a picture of it and put it on Facebook.

In three days, one page already more than 6,000 likes, 1,000 shares and 210 comments.

A friend of mine from St. Augustine called Sunday night and said she saw a picture of me on the dock. That was on a different Facebook page.

Bob and I carried out Adam’s vision as a tribute to his commitment to preserving history. We also did it because we are big Skynrd fans.

We know Adam bought the lot through his nonprofit trust. That means nobody has the authority to sell it. And true to his desires, it will be left undeveloped.

We knew someone would notice the marker. We just didn’t know it would be this quick … or this big.

To best honor the work done by the band and Adam’s desire to preserve it, Bob and I ask that everyone respect the neighborhood. If you take anything, let it be a picture. If you leave anything, let it be a footprint.

And never let the music – or Adam’s legacy – die.