Did You Know Dale Earnhardt Jr. Has A Race Car Graveyard On His North Carolina Property?

That’s one way to dispose of (or I guess honor?) retired race cars.

In case you didn’t know, Dale Earnhardt Jr. lives quite the fantasy life. The former race car driver now gets paid to talk about racing for a living (he’s pretty good at it, to his credit), and it’s not like he took the job because he was hurting for money. Dale Jr. and his family live in a house in Mooresville, North Carolina that’s on 300-acres.

The property doesn’t just feature a mansion fit for a king. Interestingly enough, there’s also an old, Western town on the property that looks like something out of a movie set. It includes an air conditioned saloon with a full bar, a tavern named Whiskey River, a chapel, and a jail. When you think of an old western town, Dale Jr’s place has it.

While the Western town typically gets all of the attention, the acreage also includes a NASCAR graveyard with tons of old cars sprinkled throughout. Some of the sports most iconic cars and paint jobs now just rot away in a wooded area of Dale’s North Carolina property.

It looks as if The Walking Dead needed to shoot a scene near an old NASCAR track.

Some years ago, JR Motorsports put out a video showcasing the race car graveyard. And Sonny Lunsford – a close friend of Dale Jr.’s and an associate that helped plan out Earnhardt’s sprawling estate – provided some insight as to how the graveyard got started, and who thought up the idea.

According to Lunsford, Dale and his team started dumping cars in their final resting place around 2005 or 2006. They thought it would be a cool idea to start keeping the whole cars rather than chopping them up after they were wrecked, and it was all the brain child of the Dale:

“It was Dale Jr’s idea. We had talked about putting muscle cars out here and making a little graveyard with an oak tree. Getting an engine and a hoist and just hanging the engine from a limb like the old shade tree mechanics used to do… Then we just started doing the crashed up race cars, because we got plenty of those.”

Unfortunately I can’t link the video directly in this story, but I can direct your attention to a TikTok user who has specialized in showing off cars in Dale Jr.’s graveyard. They do a good job of showing you the before and after pictures, and detailing the history of each car:

@hoodlum2002 Dale Jr’s Racecar Graveyard is full of some interesting cars. Starting off with Amelia from 2016 and Jr’s 2014 Texas crash. #dalejr #racecargraveyard ♬ XXXTENTACION-无文案 ( Remix) – Squidward

As to how the car graveyard gets its… corpses, Lunsford says that it has become common knowledge that Dale Jr. is a bit of a dead race car collector. When a wrecked car becomes available, Earnhardt Jr. is the first person that gets a call or text about it:

“Normally the crew chiefs or the shop foreman will text or call Dale and ask if he wants a car. Then he’ll include me on a text and say we, ‘We need to pick this car up.’ Then we end up going to the shop and getting it. Load it up with a forklift, throw it on a flatbed trailer and then bring it to the farm.”

Then, it’s laid to rest in the peaceful, serene woods of North Carolina:

@hoodlum2002 Pt. 2 of Jr’s Racecar graveyard. #chaseelliott #dalejr #racecargraveyard ♬ sonido original – diegoh_star

Pretty cool idea, eh?

It’s unreal how many iconic cars are included in the graveyard. A “Bud 8” is among the deceased, as is a rainbow painted No. 24 car. Not only is it a graveyard for race cars… it’s a bit of a museum. And Dale Jr. can choose to walk amongst the memories whenever he chooses:

@hoodlum2002 Montoya’s Jet dryer incident was something I never thought I’d see. #juanmontoya #colecuster #racecargraveyard ♬ sonido original – diegoh_star

Are you obsessed with those videos like I am?

Well I’ve got some good news. There are more where that came from…The post Did You Know Dale Earnhardt Jr. Has A Race Car Graveyard On His North Carolina Property? first appeared on Whiskey Riff.