Ingleside: The Racetrack San Francisco Still Drives Around
In the southwest corner of San Francisco, a residential street called Urbano Drive runs in a long oval. It has the shape of a horse track because it was one.
A track built out of a feud
The Ingleside Racetrack opened on Thanksgiving Day, November 28, 1895. Ed Corrigan built it with partners after a dispute with Thomas Williams, who owned the Bay View track. Their jockey club bought 148 acres of sand south of Mount Davidson. A steam train spur and a streetcar extension, laid in six days, carried the first crowd out.
How big was that crowd? The accounts differ. One gives about 8,000, the neighborhood’s historian gives about 10,000, and a racing history gives 12,000 in heavy rain. We could not confirm which is right. The covered grandstand seated 4,000.
Ten years of racing, and one car race
Ingleside was a one-mile oval, and it ran regular meetings for ten years. In 1900 it also held what is described as the first automobile race in California. Eight cars started and only the winner finished, a steam car that covered the mile in 82 seconds.
The last day of racing was December 31, 1905. Woody LaBounty, who wrote the book on the neighborhood, gives the reasons plainly: the track was cold, foggy and a long trip from downtown, and racegoers could reach tracks in the sunnier East Bay. By then Williams, Corrigan’s old rival, had added Ingleside to his own holdings.
1906: the stables become shelter
The 1906 season never opened. After the earthquake and fire in April, Williams offered the track to the city free of charge as a refugee camp. The horse stables were fitted with windows, painted and turned into living quarters. One account puts the camp at about 2,000 people, most of whom had left by 1907. The buildings then served as a temporary hospital.
Horses never raced there again, but cars did. On April 24, 1910, Barney Oldfield drove a 200-horsepower Benz around the mile in 51 seconds, a West Coast record.
From racetrack to residence park
In 1910 Joseph A. Leonard’s Urban Realty Improvement Company bought the property. Ingleside Terraces opened in 1912, with Urbano Drive paved along the loop of the old track. On October 10, 1913, Leonard dedicated a giant sundial in what had been the infield. He called it the largest in the world. LaBounty says it was not.
Two small disagreements survive in the record. One account gives the sundial as 28 feet tall, while the homes association’s history gives its gnomon as 26 feet. And Urbano Drive is described in one place as exactly one mile around, while the homes association measures it at 0.92 miles. The old clubhouse stood until 1930.
What to see today
Walk or drive Urbano Drive and you are following the course. The sundial stands on Entrada Court, inside the loop.
This piece is part of our Bay Area horse history timeline.
Sources
Ingleside Terraces Homes Association, “Some Notes on the History of Ingleside Terraces” (dates of racing, the sundial dedication, Urbano Drive)
Woody LaBounty, San Francisco Story, “Ingleside Terraces in 10 Slides” (opening day, why the track closed, the sundial)
Scott Ostler, “A Lap Around the Old Track,” FoundSF (first published in the San Francisco Chronicle, January 28, 2000)
Thoroughbred Racing Commentary, “Looking back: The lost tracks of the San Francisco Bay Area”