Daytona's beach course fading into Fla. sunset

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- In Florida, the past is continually making way for the future.

Corrosive salt spray has all but rusted away the original gantry at Cape Canaveral where Alan Shepard wedged himself into a tiny Mercury capsule for a 15-minute ride into space in 1961.

The scars left by the 1985 Palm Coast fire are all but completely healed. Where there once were acres of charred trees and dozens of scorched homes, now it's almost impossible to tell where the fire had been.

The old Port Orange rest stop on Interstate 95 is now a tangle of palmettos, pines and scrub, with just the hint of a building that advertises "snacks" as a reminder that travelers once took a welcome break from the monotony of the highway here.

And traveling down South Atlantic Avenue -- or A-1-A -- from the legendary Streamliner Hotel at dusk on a warm winter's evening, it's all but impossible to find remnants of what once was one of racing's most unique layouts.

The last race on Daytona's old beach and road course was run in 1958, but you'd be hard-pressed to find more than a couple of casual references to the place. Near where the north turn deposited cars from the hard-packed sand to the two-lane highway, a restaurant now sits.

At the other end of the old course, there's a street named South Turn Circle, and a small cut in the dunes at Beach Street, just a few hundred yards from Ponce Inlet Lighthouse. Cars can still navigate the beach here -- when the tide cooperates.

At a sedate 35 mph, the highway feels obscenely narrow and dangerous, with the vegetation crowding you from both sides of the road. How more than 70 racecars battled door handle to door handle at speeds in the triple digits is almost impossible to imagine.

A collection of high-rise condominiums and million-dollar homes now sit next to the blacktop that made up the paved portion of the old course.

Where once there was the roar of the engines and the fans, the roar of the ocean is all that's left. There are terns -- and seagulls and sandpipers -- where the turns used to be. And sea oats, not horsepower, are the main feature where the sand meets the surf.

Still, if you listen hard enough, like putting a shell to your ear to hear the ocean waves, the whispers of the drivers who braved this place not that long ago come alive. It's almost as if Big Bill France is still holding court.

The echoes of past celebrations by legends like Red Byron, Tim Flock and Lee Petty still linger, as do the voices of native sons Marshall Teague and Fireball Roberts.

Teague won twice on the beach before being killed at the brand-new speedway, built a few miles away on the mainland. Roberts was a fresh-faced 21-year-old when he made his NASCAR debut on the beach in 1950.

It's somewhat sad that so little remains of this landmark, which reaches all the way back to NASCAR's beginnings.

However, that's Florida -- home of NASCAR -- where the past is continually making way for the future.

The opinions expressed are solely of the writer.