After discovering evidence that a nail had been put in the hoof of his prized horse, Whitley suspended the highly competitive racing at Sportsman’s Hill before his death in 1813 at the Battle of the Thames. Family history and other evidence show that horse racing in the area continued well into the 1860’s and was lost only during the American Civil War. Trainers and jockey’s such as Col. John Chinn (1849-1920) and Norman Argo (1807-1913) later recalled the races held at Sportsman’s Hill after Col. Whitley’s death. About 2 miles from Crab Orchard, a mineral spring known to travelers on the Wilderness Road helped spur a large health spa industry because its waters were seen in the 19th century as medicinal. In 1827 Jack Davis built the first local spa, the Crab Orchard Springs Hotel. Southern antebellum aristocrats from Louisiana, Arkansas, and Mississippi came in summer to Crab Orchard Springs to escape heat, yellow fever, and cholera, and the fox hunting and horse racing traditions of Sportsman’s Hill attracted these visitors. In 1836 Henry Farris built Spring Hill Race Course on the southeast edge of Crab Orchard south of the city cemetery. Spring and fall racing meets, mineral waters, and five resort hotels made Crab Orchard a racing center known as the “Saratoga of the South.” Among its most prestigious events was the springtime Crab Orchard Derby, for which one prize was a coin-silver wine set with a tray, two goblets, and a pitcher filled with silver dollars. Suspended during the Civil War, the Crab Orchard Derby began to fade as deep southerners ceased to visit. In 1875 a very similar race was first held in Louisville and called the Kentucky Derby. In the 1890’s, patent medicines promoted as guaranteed health cures reduced the popularity of mineral water spas. After several destructive hotel fires and ensuing foreclosures, horse races at Crab Orchard ceased by 1922. Colonel John Chinn, breeder, author of Kentucky Racing Regulations, and owner of the 1883 Kentucky Derby winner Leonatus, said that when the South lost the Civil War, it also lost the Derby to Louisville, and that the equivalent of the Derby before then was the Crab Orchard Derby.