The track opened in 1966 at a construction cost of $500,000. Its inaugural event, the Speedy Morelock 200, immediately set a record: Richard Petty broke the NASCAR half-mile speed mark with an average of 82.023 miles per hour during the 100-mile race. The facility was a conventional paved oval situated in a rural Georgia community then numbering only around 2,000 residents.
An early sign of the track's colorful surroundings came in 1967 when federal agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives discovered a moonshine distillery hidden in an underground bunker at Turn 3 — a reminder that the region retained deep roots in the bootlegging culture that had partly inspired NASCAR's founding generation.
Middle Georgia Raceway's nine Grand National races spanned five seasons and produced a roster of winners that reads as a who's who of late-1960s stock car racing. Richard Petty won four of the nine events held there, making it one of his more productive venues of the period. Bobby Allison won three times, while David Pearson and Bobby Isaac each earned a single victory.
The 1968 season opened at the track, with LeeRoy Yarbrough taking the pole before Bobby Allison claimed the win in a 267-mile race. Later that same year, Pearson won from the pole in a 150-mile event. NASCAR's 1969 season also began at Byron: Pearson qualified fastest again, but Petty won his third race at the track, covering 250 miles at a then-track-record average of 85.121 miles per hour. Mid-season, Bobby Isaac won a 300-lap event, beating pole-sitter Pearson by four seconds with no other car on the lead lap. Isaac also set the qualifying record that season with a lap at 98.148 miles per hour.
The 1970 Georgia 500 saw Petty start from pole and win a 274-mile event. The final NASCAR race at the track was held on November 7, 1971, with Bobby Allison driving from pole to victory in a 274-mile race.
The facility gained a form of cultural notoriety entirely separate from motorsport. Over the Fourth of July weekend in 1970, the second annual Atlanta International Pop Festival was held in a soybean field adjacent to the track, drawing an estimated crowd of 400,000 people — roughly 200 times the population of Byron itself. Jimi Hendrix and the Allman Brothers Band were among more than 30 acts that performed over the festival weekend.
In 1977 the track was used as a filming location for the Richard Pryor film Greased Lightning, which told the story of Wendell Scott, the pioneering African-American NASCAR driver. In 1984 the ARCA Racing Series held an event at the track, won by Davey Allison. In 2011 the Dodge brand filmed a commercial for the Durango at the site, deliberately aging the facility's appearance for atmospheric effect.
After NASCAR competition ended in 1971, the track continued to host local and regional events before eventually falling into disuse. The property was later purchased with intentions of redevelopment, but those plans stalled following economic downturns. On September 15, 2012, an official Georgia Historical Society marker was erected near the raceway to commemorate the 1970 pop festival — underscoring that, in the long run, the music gathering may have left a deeper cultural imprint on the site than the racing that gave it its name.
The track's compressed NASCAR window — just six seasons — belied its significance as an arena where the sport's defining rivalry-era drivers competed repeatedly at close quarters on a fast, intimate half-mile circuit.