By the 1980's people had moved to the suburbs, and the fair and racetrack had to compete with Six Flags Over Georgia Amusement Park and Atlanta Motor Speedway. Lakewood has lost its gleam. The agricultural shows are a thing of the past. and the buildings are now used for local flea markets and antique shows. An amphitheater brings in a crowd for special musical events. Its outdoor concert and parking area cover the old speedway's third and fourth turns and most of the straightaways. The track's ghostly old concrete grandstand remains, but the lake is now a dirty pond. The identity and heart of Lakewood is all but gone.
After the fairgrounds were built and the 1916 Southeastern Fair was over, Atlanta decided to try something different. On July 4, 1917 Lakewood saw a horse races and motorcycle races. The horse races lasted five hours, and the crowd was tiring when the motorcycles cranked up. E.G. Walker from Macon won the first race on a Harley. J. Parmalee of Atlanta won the amateur race. The events were a huge success with an announced attendance of 23,384.
The next week Ralph DePalma and the legendary Barney Oldfield ran a set of match races of 10, 15, and 25 miles. Admission for the three races was 50 cents for adults and 25 cents for children. An extra 25 cents gained a seat in the grandstands.
Oldfield was in his Golden Submarine; DePalma was in his Packard. Lakewood added an aviator to do loops over the speedway for extra thrills, and the fans got their money's worth. Larry Brown, the aviator, crashed in front of the crowd and walked away from a destroyed airplane.
A crowd of 15-20,000 saw Oldfield win the first race and DePalma win the second. In the third race the Golden Submarine threw a wheel and damaged the axle so badly it could not be repaired. Although DePalma said he would wait for repairs, Oldfield withdrew, and DePalma was the World's Dirt Champion by default.
During the 20's and 30's the duels on the track were almost as intense as the duels off the track for the sanctioning of the finest mile track in the South. The American Automobile Association (AAA) and the International Motor Contest Association (IMCA) battled each other for the right to hold events at Lakewood.
AAA claimed that a lot of the IMCA results were predetermined. Because race cars were so hard to come by and the schedule ran from late February to early November, IMCA could not afford to have their stars, much less their cars, torn up in racing events. IMCA also felt that racing was unsafe and wanted to protect the racers.
