Set against the San Gabriel Mountains in near year-round ideal weather, Santa Anita Park has been regarded as one of the world’s most beautiful and successful horse race tracks since opening on Christmas Day 1934. Under founder Charles H. Strub, it introduced innovations including the photo finish and later a public address announcer calling the races, and it became the first track in the United States to offer a continuous $100,000 race, the Santa Anita Handicap. Record crowds of more than 85,000 attended races there in 1947 and again in 1985, and Look magazine called it “The World’s Richest Racetrack” in 1948. The track is closely associated with famous horses including Seabiscuit, John Henry, Citation, Spectacular Bid, and Zenyatta, and jockeys including George “The Iceman” Woolf, Johnny Longden, Willie Shoemaker, Chris McCarron, and Laffit Pincay, Jr. Its roots go back to Elias J. “Lucky” Baldwin, founder of Arcadia in 1903, who built an earlier Santa Anita track that opened on December 7, 1907, but California outlawed horse racing in February 1909, Baldwin died on March 1, 1909, and the grandstand burned in 1912. Anticipating the legalization of pari-mutuel betting in June 1933, Baldwin’s daughter Anita received a license in July 1932 and partnered with Joseph M. Smoot to build a new track, but the project stalled before she sold land to the Los Angeles Turf Club, including Charles H. Strub and Hal Roach, who created the present park. Strub, a former dentist and owner of the San Francisco Seals, was inspired by the 1932 Olympics to build a venue for 60,000 people, hired Gwynn Wilson from the 1932 Olympics, and opened Santa Anita Park two years later to a crowd of more than 30,000. Architect Gordon Kaufman gave the track its award-winning Art Deco design, and designer Chet Phillips created the equestrian frieze along the grandstand. The park became a Hollywood attraction through its ties to Hal Roach, drawing stars, owners, and filmmakers, and it appeared in films from Charlie Chan at the Race Track in 1936 and A Day at the Races in 1937 to Seabiscuit in 2003, as well as television productions. During World War II, racing was suspended from 1942 to 1944 when the U.S. Government took over the facility; for most of that time it served as Camp Santa Anita, a major Army ordnance training center, and from March 30 to October 27, 1942, it also served as an assembly center for Americans of Japanese ancestry before their transfer to internment camps. The government briefly held German prisoners of war there before returning the track on Sept. 9, 1944, and racing resumed one week after Victory in Europe Day on May 8, 1945. In 1984 Santa Anita hosted the Olympic equestrian events in Los Angeles, welcoming 232,158 people over nine days and 250 horses from 31 nations, and over the years it also hosted the Breeders’ Cup five times in that series’ first 25 years. Since its founding, its owners and managers have also contributed millions of dollars to Arcadia institutions and civic projects.
