Sportsman Hill was the site of one of the earliest circular racetracks and a forerunner of the Kentucky Derby. Built about 1780 and laid out in 1788 by Col. Wm. Whitley on his estate, the half-mile track let crowds gather within it and see the entire race. A fervent patriot with an aversion to anything English, Whitley used clay instead of turf and ran races counter-clockwise rather than clockwise, a practice still used on oval tracks in the USA. He built his house so the racetrack was visible from it, and fall meetings there brought the region’s elite for races that began at dawn and were followed by a lavish breakfast. In pre-Civil War days, it was the most popular center for horse racing and fox hunting and greatly enhanced Kentucky’s prestige as the fatherland of fine horses, though racing there ended with the Civil War. Whitley, a famous pioneer, Indian fighter, hero and poet who had come to Kentucky with George Rogers Clark in 1775, chose a settlement on Cedar Creek, later returned to Virginia for his family, and built the first brick house west of the Alleganies in Flemish Bond design at Sportsman Hill. He was killed at age 64 in the War of 1812 at the Battle of the Thames, and although Tecumseh’s death remains uncertain, Whitley’s contribution to pioneer Kentucky is presented as a fact. The track was so popular that on Oct. 21, 1788, the Lincoln Co. Court ordered a road built from Whitley’s race path to the Lincoln Co. Court House.