An Abandoned Race Track
The Remains of Minnesota’s Wee Town Outlaw Speedway
This is what remains of Wee Town Outlaw Speedway (also known as Lake Region Speedway and West Central Speedway) northeast of Fergus Falls, in Western Minnesota. It is just a few miles off Interstate 94, about an hour from the Fargo/Moorhead metropolitan area.
Originally opened in 1962, the speedway went through multiple owners and several periods of inactivity over the years.
A friend told me this was once a very cool place to watch stock cars and outlaws. It was in the middle of Minnesota vacation country, just down the highway from the famous WeFest country music festival in Detroit Lakes every summer, and close to great camping, hiking and fishing destinations.
In 1986, high water from neighboring Fish Lake began to become a problem at the speedway, and the track was closed from 1987 to 1989. It reopened in 1990 before closing down for good in 1993.
The Fergus Falls Journal wrote an interesting story about this place back in 2007.
The photos shown here represent how it looked in 2012, nineteen years after it shut down. My journey was a short one because I lived just an hour down the interstate. I traveled southeast from Moorhead on Interstate 94 and exited at Fergus Falls. The track lies along the highway dubbed the Otter Tail Scenic Byway, and the name is apropos. The scenery did not disappoint with a variety of tamarac and spruce that occasionally crept right up to the road, and just when I thought I was in the forest, the landscape would open up to reveal a majestic lake.
In this case, it’s Fish Lake, and I found it had swallowed Wee Town Outlaw Speedway into its depths.
I wandered around the site for about a half-hour with my eyes open for anyone that I might be able to talk to, but nobody was around. It was just me and the wildlife while I snapped pictures of the old catch fence.
I found a video that features racing at the Wee Town Outlaw Speedway when it reopened in 1990. Check out some racing action courtesy Corey Litton and The Racing Life.
Here’s another from 1992, shortly before the track closed for good, and this video shows some of the infield.
The track at Wee Town was built next to Fish Lake in a climate that was drier in the past. Over the years, the region got a little wetter, the water level came up, and as you can see, today the infield is a lake. Blue and green have taken back the brown.
It’s not hard to find an abandoned race track to photograph. Stock car racing has been going through a rough time in recent years and tracks have closed at a rapid rate. As a matter of fact, this is the second abandoned stock car track I've photographed in Minnesota, and I’ll share the other one in a future post.
When I was done shooting the speedway, I packed up my gear and headed back to Fergus, where I got a small-town cheeseburger in a Main Street cafe, which was my reward for the road trip. Although Wee Town Outlaw Speedway is easy to find, and not too far from lodging and dining accommodations in Fergus Falls, I’m told the speedway has been freshly posted “No Trespassing” some time since I visited, so make sure you get permission if you decide to go.
Until next time, Globetrotters!
Troy Larson is a writer, digital content creator, and broadcast veteran with hundreds of podcast and broadcast credits to his name. Reach out on Mastodon and on Twitter.
