Rocky road: as stock-car racing memories fade in Rockingham, Ashley-Michelle Thublin and a new generation help rev Richmond County's engines.

• Author: Mims, Bryan
• Position: TOWN SQUARE

Out here among the hills of sand, the North Carolina Motor Speedway's grandstands rise out of the longleaf pine scenery like a shrine to when stock-car racing was mostly Southern and unvarnished by the modern-day corporate engine. But the track known as The Rock doesn't roll like it once did. The one-mile oval is quiet and hasn't hosted a top-level race since 2004. Gone are the high-octane names of Richard Petty, Junior Johnson and other knights of racing who rumbled the track for decades.

The speedway thrust Rockingham onto the map when it opened in 1965. For almost 40 years, The Rock was up there with Charlotte, Daytona and Talladega as a key NASCAR port of call. But the circuit has moved on to bigger markets.

While a nearby dragway remains among its sport's most active venues, Richmond County and its largest city know their future can't rely on the pedal-to-the-metal pace of motorsports. The better long-term bet is energetic folks such as Ashley-Michelle Thublin, 26, who came to town two years ago for a job as public information officer for the local public schools, the largest employer in the county. Eager to describe the cool stuff her "kiddos" are doing, her wide smile arid ebullience can destroy a bad case of the blahs. "Everyone was just so welcoming," she says. "They said, 'We are 100% behind our students.' And everyone was just so friendly. OK, I could move here. I just loved it."

Arriving without knowing anyone, she plugged into the community through the Richmond Young Professionals, a group of millennials who meet regularly to talk, have fun and volunteer. "It is just bang-up amazingness for me," she says. "We have bankers, we have architects in there, we have nurses."

Thublin took an unusual path to North Carolina. She grew up in Dublin, Ga., a city of about 16,000, then went to New York University to study journalism and history. While in Manhattan, she interned at The New York Times, ABC Sports and Good Housekeeping magazine, originally planning to be a television sports reporter. During a visit home in her senior year, she learned that the Dublin superintendent wanted a public-relations person. After stopping by a kindergarten class, the glamour of TV suddenly lost its luster, and she took the school job.

She spent a year and a half in Dublin, then in 2015 jumped to Richmond County, a rural area with median household income of about $33,000, a hollowed-out manufacturing sector and a 30% poverty rate. Its population is little...