It’s been too long since our last edition of “Where The Heel?,” so I picked (what I believe to be) a tough one.

Can you identify this building? Can you tell me where in North Carolina it is? (By the way, it is still standing.) If you have a guess, leave it in the comments for this post. We’ll let you know if you are correct!

Part of my job with the North Carolina Postcards project is to describe the postcards, including the messages written on them. Today I came across this Durham postcard, and you’ll notice that the message is written in German. Suffering a severe unfamiliarity with the language, I am having trouble transcribing it, and am wondering if any of you folks out there can help!

While a translation would be quite interesting, what we need most is an actual transcription of the message in German.

Any help?

The North Carolina Collection is a treasure trove of interesting and fun items (as well as an excellent research library–if we do say so ourselves). As a way of sharing some of these items, we are starting a “Where The Heel?” contest. Inspired by a similar feature in a 1937 issue of The State magazine (now Our State), every so often we’ll post a blog entry asking you, our readers, if you can identify a certain town. Though The State offered their winners a $10 prize (during the Great Depression, no less!), we can only promise you glory and honor.

To get things started, can you identify this city (ca. 1930-1945)? Leave a comment, and watch for us to comment back once we have a winner.

One of the greatest mysteries I’ve encountered here in the North Carolina Collection has revolved around this postcard of “Charlotte Speedway:”

Curious about this predecessor to today’s Lowes Motor Speedway, I sleuthed around a bit to learn more about the track. What I found was perplexing: most sources described Charlotte Speedway as a dirt track built near the old airport in 1949, where stock car races were held. And yet, pictured here was an indy race on a wooden track, and the card appeared to be much older than 1949. I kept searching for traces of the speedway, to no avail. It seemed that maybe this indy track had been utterly forgotten here in stock car country.

Months have passed since my initial investigation, but today while browsing the index to “The State” magazine, I spotted this listing: “First Speedway Race Track.” Though I expected this lead would end up yet another reference the 1949 stock car track, I had to give it a shot. When I opened that November 1979 issue, I saw it: an image of a wooden track identical to the one pictured in the postcard.

Sure enough, there was another Charlotte Speedway built in Pineville in 1924, where indy races were held. According to the brief article by Bugs Barringer, the track was made of green pine two by fours, so that the wood would cure and shrink, allowing ventilation between the boards and preventing the tires from burning during races. Apparently a few stock car races were held at the track but, ironically, they attracted too few spectators to be profitable.

From training camps, to parks, to opera houses: Vanished North Carolina features images from North Carolina Postcards of selected historic places that no longer exist. Use the interactive map to zoom in to each historic site and see what’s there today. You can find Vanished North Carolina along with our other special features on the Browse by Subject page.

A 1933 hurricane pushed the G. A. Kohler, a four-masted schooner from Baltimore, ashore just north of Cape Hatteras. The wreck remained on the coast until World War II, when the wooden ship was burned in an effort to recover scrap iron from her hull. The image of the intact ship was made sometime between the wreck and 1945.

The color image, which comes from a postcard in the Durwood Barbour Collection, is not dated but is thought to have been created in the 1950s or 1960s.

We’re always adding new cards to the North Carolina Postcards site, and the first cards for the following towns just went up!

Bath
China Grove
Draper (now Eden)
Falcon
LaGrange
Millbrook
Mount Sterling
Nashville
Oak Island
Oak Ridge
Ramseur
Robersonville
Saint Helena
Stanley
Tapoco
Walnut Cove

And don’t forget, there are just three more days left to catch the duck races, tractor pulls, and fried oreos at the North Carolina State Fair. Will you be traveling in style?

Postcards from the following towns — the first for each one — have recently been added to the North Carolina Postcards digital collection:

Morven
Mortimer
Mount Gilead
Mount Pleasant
Murfreesboro
Murphy
Linville Falls
Buffalo City
Currie
Marion
Wendell
Nags Head

Postcard collector Durwood Barbour and the North Carolina Postcards digital collection were recently featured on Brian Shrader’s Siteseeing Blog on WRAL.com.

Two new features are now available on the North Carolina Postcards website, giving users a couple of different ways to browse through the cards. A list of colleges and universities shows the many schools that appear in postcards, from well-known universities like North Carolina State to little-known and nearly-forgotten institutions like the Joseph Keasbey Brick Agricultural, Industrial, and Normal School.

Another new feature incorporates Google Maps to show the locations of a handful of North Carolina textile mills, some of which are not even around anymore. With the Google Maps feature users can compare current maps with satellite views and zoom in to the exact location of the mills. This is pretty fun stuff.