Golden Gate Park’s Horse Years: The Speed Road, the Stadium and the Stables

Watch: the story in under 30 seconds

The big oval in the west end of Golden Gate Park is called the Polo Field, though almost nobody plays polo there. Its story is a horse story from the start: a private speed road, a trotting track, a stadium opened in the weeks after the 1906 earthquake, and a stable that lasted until 2001.

The Speed Road

In 1890 a privately funded race course called the Speed Road went into the park, built so that wealthy owners could show their fast horses. The long meadow east of the Polo Field, Hellman Hollow, is what is left of it. Many San Franciscans still call it Speedway Meadow. Until 1904, horses and bicycles were the only traffic allowed in the park.

A stadium for a shaken city

  • January 6, 1905. Ground is broken for the Golden Gate Park Stadium, designed by the Reid Brothers: a bicycle track around a large field.

  • July 4, 1906. It opens with an athletic carnival, three months after the earthquake and fire, as a celebration that the city had survived.

  • 1913. A newspaper describes 30 acres with an outer track 60 feet wide for trotting. Harness racing has its heyday here, then fades as owners turn from horses to automobiles.

  • 1931. The city designates it a municipal polo field, and the name sticks.

The stables

The Works Progress Administration built police stables beside the field in the late 1930s, and the mounted unit still lives there. The public stable next door closed in 2001, which one local history counts as the end of about 130 years of public horses in the park. The concrete bleachers came down in 2010. The city has since looked for a new operator to bring public riding back.

The outer dirt track is still open to riders. This is one entry in the full Bay Area horse history timeline.

Sources

HistoryZachary LeydenBay Area horse history, San Francisco, Golden Gate Park, Polo Field