“You can’t brake late here,” she says, leaning against her track-prepped Mazda MX-5 at the roadside pull-off. “You can’t drift like you’re in a video game. Lolly’s rewards smooth hands and a cool head. Panic once, and you’ll be picking leaves out of your radiator.”
“You don’t fix something that ain’t broken,” growls a man named Hoyt from a rocking chair on the gas station porch. He’s 74. He’s never owned a car that cost more than $2,000. He runs Lolly’s every Sunday after church. “People come from three states away to drive this road. You pave it flat, they’ll go somewhere else. And they’ll take their money with ’em.”
The curves that made her famous are now a proving ground. From above, Lolly’s looks like a tangled rope thrown over a mountain. From the driver’s seat, it feels like a math problem you have to solve in real time—or die trying. lolly's killer curves
For the uninitiated, Lolly’s is a 10.7-mile section of Old Route 29, carved into the ridge between Parson’s Hollow and Blue Summit. It’s named after Lolly Taggart, a bootlegger’s wife who, in 1953, supposedly drove a modified Hudson Hornet through this pass at 90 miles an hour with a trunk full of moonshine—and a federal agent hanging off her rear bumper. She lost him in the third hairpin. Legend says she never spilled a drop.
You know Lolly’s Killer Curves.
If you ever find yourself at the foot of Lolly’s Killer Curves, pull over. Check your tires. Breathe. And remember what the old-timers say: Lolly never lifted. But you might want to. Old Route 29, Parson’s Hollow to Blue Summit. Best driven at dawn on weekdays. No trailers. No first-timers in the rain. And for God’s sake, don’t wave at the pink cross unless you’ve earned it.
“It’s a brotherhood,” says Frankie No-Last-Name, a retired trucker who’s run Lolly’s over 4,000 times. “You don’t master these curves. You just get a little less bad at them. And when you hit that last straight—the run down into Blue Summit—and your brakes are hot, and your knuckles are white, and you didn’t die? That’s not a drive. That’s a prayer answered.” There’s talk of straightening the worst sections. The state says it’s a safety issue. Locals say it’s an insult. “You can’t brake late here,” she says, leaning
Local driving instructor Mariana “Mari” Cruz calls it “a conversation with physics.”