Lolly's Killer Curves May 2026

Memorial crosses dot the roadside, weather-beaten and adorned with faded ribbons. One, near mile marker 14, is painted bright pink. That one’s for Lolly herself—she died in 2001, not in a crash, but in her rocking chair, facing the road she conquered. Her grandson still leaves a jar of white lightning on the marker every May 15.

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. lolly's killer curves

“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. Her grandson still leaves a jar of white