Everyone knows that the state of Kentucky has a long and varied history with horse racing. Every year the Kentucky derby draws huge crowds to Churchill Downs. But not too many people know that the St. Louis area also has a very long history of racing too. According to the Encyclopedia of the History of St. Louis, there was a quarter-mile horseracing track “on the prairie adjoining the St. Louis settlement in 1767.” In 1830 and several years afterward, races took place on St. Charles Rock Road in the northern part of the city. In 1848, a Jockey Club was formed and races were held on Manchester road. There was a popular interest in horse racing until the Civil War, when interest tapered off. Then in 1877, the St. Louis Jockey Club was formed, a full one-mile track was laid out and the first grandstand was built. In 1894, a track was built where the intersection of Russell and Missouri Avenues is now. The great tornado of 1896 wiped out the track and it was never rebuilt.
Fairmont Park was opened across the river in Collinsville, Illinois in 1925. In 1947, Fairmont became the only lighted one-mile racetrack in the world. A second track in nearby Cahokia was opened in 1954. Over the years interest in horse racing in the area slowly waned and Cahokia closed in 1979.
When I was 15 years old I got my first job at Fairmont Park. My mother had recently remarried and my stepfather worked there as a trainer. We stayed in a small white house that was adjacent to the track, but I remember sometimes sleeping on a bunk in the “tack room” that was in the stable. Sometimes I would be awakened in the middle of the night by the sound of horse’s hoofs kicking in the stall next to me. My job was to clean out the stalls, refresh them with new hay, feed and groom some of the horses. I had a pitchfork and a little red wheelbarrow that I would fill up and take out to the manure pile. During my off time I would ride the Palomino pony that my stepfather had gotten for me or explore the creek that separated the racetrack from the stable area. It didn’t last very long (my stepfather died just a couple of years later) but I remember that as being one of the best summers of my life.
Now, unfortunately, live racing in the St. Louis area may be coming to an end. The track has been steadily losing money ever since casino gambling was legalized in Missouri and Illinois. The Illinois legislature has a bill before them that will either allow slot machines at the park or tax the casinos and earmark some of the money towards the track. Until then the track is cutting back by having only 60 nights of racing per year. They have already eliminated all of the harness racing.
Most of the stable workers at Fairmont Park now are legal immigrants from Mexico who make $200 a week and live in narrow 60 room dormitories that are rent free. Sometimes entire families occupy one room. Most of them don’t know what they would do if the track closed down. I went back and visited Fairmont a while back and the little white house we lived in is still there, as well as the stables and the little wooden bridge that crossed over the creek, but who knows for how long?
