Harold Brasington was a retired racer in 1948. He had gotten to know Bill France, Sr. while competing against France at the Daytona Beach Road Course and other dirt tracks in the Southeast and Midwestern United States. He quit racing in the late 1940s to concentrate on farming and his construction business. He began planning a new speedway after he noticed the huge crowds while attending the 1948 Indianapolis 500. He thought "If Tony Hulman can do it here, I can do it back home." He bought 70 acres from farmer Sherman Ramsey, and started making a superspeedway from a cotton and peanut field. He was forced to create an egg-shaped oval with one tighter, narrower, and more steeply banked because he promised Ramsey that the new track wouldn't disturb Ramsey's minnow pond at the west side of the property. Brasington was able to make other turn at the east side of the property wide, sweeping, and flat as he wanted. It took almost a year to build the track.

In recent years the track has been reconfigured; what was the front stretch is now the back stretch, and the turns have been renumbered accordingly. Seating has been increased to approximately 65,000; although it has been limited by the proximity of a railroad track to the facility, a highway behind the back stretch, and the still-present pond.

The title of how the track earned the moniker The Lady in Black was allegedly because the walls around the track are always painted white prior to a race, but are always largely black by the end of it due to a profusion of tire contacts. Darlington is also known as "The Track Too Tough to Tame", and rookie racers hitting the wall are considered to have received their "Darlington stripe".

For many years Darlington was the site of two annual Winston Cup races; one was held in the spring and the other, the Southern 500 (its name has varied in recent years due to sale of naming rights but this is what fans generally continued to call it), was always held on Labor Day weekend. In 2003, the Labor Day event was given to California Speedway, and the Southern 500 was moved to November of 2004 and was run as part of the Chase for the NEXTEL Cup.

In 2005, NASCAR eliminated the Southern 500 altogether, which offended many traditionalists. The race was merged with the 400-mile spring race and moved to Mother's Day Weekend, with a 500-mile night race sponsored by Dodge taking their place.