Owsley County hosts opening round of national RallyCross series

Booneville spent June 19-21 at the center of a national RallyCross calendar, as the 2026 Great Lakes RallyCross Divisional Challenge brought the Sports Car Club of America’s opening divisional round to the Appalachian Overland Triangle in Owsley County. The event at 2843 Little Sturgeon Creek Rd. in Old Landing marked the county’s place at the front of a four-event summer series and positioned Booneville as the first stop on the road to the RallyCross National Championship.

For Owsley County, the significance was bigger than cones and dirt. The SCCA describes its Divisional Challenge format as a way to bring “the feel of the National Championship on the road,” with competition over two days and multiple courses, which made the Booneville site more than a local novelty. MotorsportReg identified the venue as a new Kentucky RallyCross facility, underscoring that the county was not merely hosting a race weekend, but testing whether a purpose-built off-road site could turn into a repeat destination.

That question matters in a county where every visitor counts. Owsley County’s 2020 population was 4,051, Booneville is the county seat, and Zeke Little, Jr. serves as judge/executive. In a place that small, a national-caliber weekend has outsized effects because any traffic from drivers, crews, spectators, and volunteers lands in one tight local economy. The SCCA also noted that the Great Lakes event had shifted this year from West Virginia to Owsley County, a sign that Booneville was not just filling a date on the calendar, but taking over a more prominent role in the divisional series.

The RallyCross weekend also fit into a larger local buildout around outdoor recreation. Backroads of Appalachia describes the Appalachian Overland Triangle as an off-road destination spanning Kentucky, Ohio, and West Virginia, and a 2025 plan placed a national rally training center in Owsley County on a 200-plus-acre site near Daniel Boone National Forest. That plan called for a 60,000-square-foot facility and a 1.4-mile off-road course, backed in part by a $7.4 million Appalachian Regional Commission ARISE grant. The June RallyCross round looked like an early public test of that bigger vision.

Booneville had already seen the venue used before. Backroads of Appalachia promoted an April 11 Appalachian RallyCross Series spring challenge at the same site, and local reporting at the time said competitors and spectators were expected from across the region and beyond. With the June divisional now in the books, Owsley County has a clearer answer to the question that will shape its next phase: whether national visibility, land use, and public effort around motorsports become a recurring part of Booneville’s future.