Our Mission.To COMPILE the history of harness racing's Vintage Venues & Lost Trotting Clubs in the State of Illinois.To PRESERVE all materials related to the Rich History of Trotting in the State of Illinois.To EDUCATE the public through this website, or any other available means, about harness racing's Vintage Venues & Lost Trotting Clubs in the State of Illinois.DID YOU NOTICE...
That we updated "Chicago's Vintage Trotting Venues" map above with a new trotting track?
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History Dept.Trotting races in Illinois can be traced back to 1840 when the Chicago Jockey Club was officially formed. Four years later, in 1844, they opened the first harness racing facility called the Chicago Driving Park. The driving park was located north of present day East 35th St. between South Michigan and South Indiana Avenues. It can be surmised that this was perhaps the first formal harness racing venue in the state and that the sport spread outward to the surrounding counties, then state wide, as trotters and pacers gained in popularity.Other Chicago area trotting parks soon followed. Harness racing started at the Garden City race track in 1854 while the Brighton Park Trotting Park opened its gates a year later in 1855. Dexter Park opened next in 1864 and in 1878 West side Park set up operations just west of Chicago's Garfield Park.Horse racing was so popular that by 1900, 80 of the 102 Illinois county fairs featured trotting and pacing competitions. Chicago's fair board, incorporated in the 1870s, sought a permanent location in its northwest farm communities to provide a one-half-mile oval track for harness racing and speed trials.-- Some of the above History was excerpted from the Encyclopedia of Chicago at encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org.Books."Harness Racing Vehicles" is the first book ever to have its main focus on the vehicles for trotting. Michael P. D'Amato is a former harness horse owner and Susan Green has been the project director on numerous publications for horse drawn vehicles. There really doesn't seem to be a whole lot of information available on early sulkies for harness racing, but everything that could be found has been put together in this book to make a wealth of information for researchers, historians and collectors. An internet search will reveal several sites where this book can be purchased.Photo Gallery.Editor's Notes & etc.The following abbreviations are used to save space: T.C. for "Trotting Club", D.P. for "Driving Park", & T.P. for "Trotting Park".Advertisments....Collector's Corner continued.Here are some examples of Harness Racing themed fruit crate labels. They're very colorful and fun to collect!
--Source: https://www.blueskysearch.com/Pages/History-of-Crate-Labels.html |