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From the Gold Rush racetracks to the last race day at Golden Gate Fields: the horses, tracks and stables that shaped the Bay Area, with every date tied to a source.
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From the Gold Rush racetracks to the last race day at Golden Gate Fields: the horses, tracks and stables that shaped the Bay Area, with every date tied to a source.
A wartime riders’ patrol that the sheriff kept after the war, and the 23-acre Woodside grounds that became one of the Peninsula’s busiest horse venues.
For 58 years to the day, San Francisco’s fire engines were pulled by horses. The last run was on Jessie Street on August 19, 1921.
A private speed road in 1890, a stadium opened three months after the 1906 earthquake, and a public stable that closed in 2001: the horse history of the Polo Field.
Since 1970 a red barn above Bear Valley has kept Morgan horses for the National Park Service. For three decades it bred them for parks across the country.
San Francisco has had police on horseback without a break since 1874, the second longest run in the country. The horses live in Golden Gate Park.
Five brick stables from 1914 still stand in the Presidio. A decade earlier, the 9th Cavalry rode from this post to guard Yosemite and Sequoia.
The Cow Palace got its name from a Depression-era insult and its purpose from the Grand National: livestock, horse show and rodeo, first held in November 1941.
At 12:38 a.m. on April 14, 1860, the first Pony Express mail from the East reached San Francisco aboard a river steamer, and the city threw a party.
In June 1878, twelve cameras beside a track at Leland Stanford’s Palo Alto farm proved that a moving horse leaves the ground, and made pictures move.
On October 1, 1938, a 12-year-old horse named Blackie swam the Golden Gate in 23 minutes and 15 seconds to settle a bet.
Tanforan in San Bruno was a racetrack for most of 65 years, Seabiscuit won there, and in 1942 nearly 8,000 Japanese Americans were held in its stalls and barracks.
From the first racetrack in the Mission in 1851 to the last race day at Golden Gate Fields in 2024: the dates that shaped horses around San Francisco Bay.