Louis, whose family operated several racetracks in the Midwest.Ĭelebrated Chicago architect Zachary Taylor Davis was hired to design Oaklawn’s glass-enclosed, heated grandstand – among the first of its kind in the country – in 1904. The men formed the Oaklawn Jockey Club in 1904 and decided to build a track closer to downtown Hot Springs (Essex Park was roughly four miles southeast of what would become Oaklawn).Īccording to the Encyclopedia of Arkansas History and Culture, “the name 'Oaklawn' came from the rural community in which the track would be built, which in turn took its name from what Peter LaPatourel, an early settler to the area, called his home, around which a large stand of ancient oaks stood.”Īmong Oaklawn’s other founding partners were brothers Louis and Charles Cella of St. It was billed as a “Gentlemen’s Resort of the Highest Class” in a 1901 advertisement in the Hot Springs Sentinel-Record newspaper. Oaklawn’s original owners included John Condon and Dan Stuart, who also ran Southern Club and Turf Exchange, a popular downtown Hot Springs night spot. Even Little Rock, 50 miles northeast of Hot Springs, had a race meet.īy 1920, Oaklawn was the only track still standing.

Essex Park, adjacent to a major train route from Malvern to Hot Springs, opened on Malvern Road in 1904. Historical data indicates a track called Sportsman’s Park was operating in the late 1890s. Oaklawn wasn’t the first racetrack in Hot Springs, but it’s still going strong today, the lone survivor of what was a fairly crowded central Arkansas landscape more than a century ago. FOR A COMPLETE DECADE BY DECADE HISTORY OF OAKLAWN, CLICK HERE.

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