The first Watkins Glen Grand Prix was held in 1948 on a 6.6-mile course laid out through Watkins Glen State Park and the village itself. Cameron Argetsinger, a Cornell law student and SCCA member, organized the event with the local Chamber of Commerce. The 8-lap, 52.8-mile race was won by Frank Griswold in a pre-war Alfa Romeo 8C. Tragedy struck early: a driver was killed and spectators were injured in 1950, and in 1952 twelve spectators were injured and one killed when a car left the circuit in the village. These incidents led organizers to relocate the course to a hillside southwest of the village for 1953, and the safety concerns there eventually drove the construction of a dedicated permanent circuit — Watkins Glen International — opened in 1956.
In 1951 the event became part of the SCCA National Sports Car Championship. In 1963 it joined the United States Road Racing Championship, the SCCA's new road racing series.
In 1968 the race was expanded to six hours and joined the World Sportscar Championship, becoming one of three American rounds of the WSC alongside the 24 Hours of Daytona and 12 Hours of Sebring. The Six Hours at Watkins Glen occupied a traditional summer slot on the championship calendar and ran as a WSC round from 1968 until 1981, providing the series with its sole mid-season North American presence for much of that period. The race was not held in 1982 following the track's financial difficulties and the FIA's decision not to return the World Championship to the United States.
The event returned in 1984 under IMSA control in an altered format. The 1984 running split the race across two days, with three hours held and then completed the next day — an experiment known as the Camel Continental. In 1985 the Continental further separated sports prototypes and GT cars into two three-hour heats. By 1986 it was consolidated into a single 500-mile event, shortened to 500 km in 1987.
Through the late 1980s and into the 1990s, IMSA maintained two separate Watkins Glen events — the Continental for prototypes and the New York 500 for GT cars in autumn. The New York 500 was dropped in 1992. In 1996 IMSA restored the combined prototype and GT format that the event had historically used. In 1998 Watkins Glen scheduled the Six Hours as part of the short-lived United States Road Racing Championship, which folded in 1999.
Grand American Road Racing took control of the event from 2000 onward, retaining the six-hour format in the Rolex Sports Car Series. Following the 2014 merger of Grand-Am and the American Le Mans Series, IMSA regained control under the United SportsCar Championship, which became the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship. The six-hour format and the Watkins Glen venue have been maintained continuously since then.
The 2020 race was relocated to Road Atlanta due to COVID-19 restrictions imposed by New York State authorities that prevented NASCAR Holdings from hosting events at the circuit.
The Six Hours of Watkins Glen represents the longest continuous tradition of road racing in the United States. Its inclusion in the World Sportscar Championship from 1968 to 1981 made it the primary venue at which European works teams engaged American circuits during the golden age of the WSC, and its current role in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship sustains that tradition of high-level international sports car competition on an American road course.
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