Breed Only The Best

Thoroughbreds and Standardbreds made this area a center of America’s finest racing and driving horses during the 1800s, when good horses were essential for power, transportation, sport, draft work, harness, rapid delivery, cavalry service, individual travel, and racing. Kentuckians embraced horse racing early, and by the 1790s impromptu races in Lexington’s streets had become such a nuisance they were outlawed, while before 1800 nearly every county seat had a racecourse and one-on-one match races helped popularize the sport across America. Publicity and betting in the tens of thousands of dollars made the horse America’s first sports celebrity, and before the Civil War the famous Thoroughbred Lexington defeated his rival Lecompte in a widely publicized series of matches. Robert A. Alexander bought Lexington for $15,000 and retired him to stud at Woodburn Farm on Old Frankfort Pike, where for sixteen years he led the Thoroughbred sires list with a record-breaking number of race-winning offspring and became one of the most influential founding sires of the breed. The Bluegrass gained a national reputation for fine equine stock through the time, money, and efforts of a small number of visionary agrarians in the neighborhood, and after the Civil War breeding shifted from four-mile heats toward shorter, faster races and younger, faster sprinters. Farms including Woodburn, Stonewall, Equira, Bosque Bonita, Sunny Slopu, Spring Hill, and Nantura formed a critical mass whose owners and horse bloodlines strongly affected the national blooded horse industry. The Standardbred bloodline originated in the Thoroughbred, and although the Thoroughbred was famed for speed on the racecourse, the versatile Standardbred dominated the blooded equine industry throughout the 19th century, trotting and pacing in light harness and also being ridden for jumping, hunting, and gaming because of its temperament and athleticism. Woodburn is recognized as a foundation farm of the breed, and along with Lexington and other Thoroughbreds that sired many Standardbred foals, Harold, sire of the famous Maud S, stood here. In 1878 William H. Vanderbilt bought the locally bred Maud S for $21,000 and used her as his personal road horse even though she was the fastest racing trotter on record, then six years later returned her to the track, where she lowered the world mile record six times in seven years.

Lexington-Fayette, Kentucky · United States