Texas Turf

Texas was a land of change in the nineteenth century. Different flags flew in Texas skies during this period, but horse racing remained the most popular sport under each banner. Settlers from the United States started jockey clubs and Thoroughbred horse races in the cities, while sprint racing for a quarter mile with horses of dubious ancestry reigned in the small towns and rural areas. Whether a man enjoyed short distance sprints or the longer heats of Thoroughbreds, it was clear that Texans preferred racing above all other pastimes.  

As Stephen F. Austin brought his first colonists to Texas, race tracks drew huge crowds back east with crowds larger than 60,000 gathering at places like the Union Course on Long Island, New York.  As settlers moved west, they took their love of the track with them.  This book looks at the two types of racing popular in Texas from the arrival of American settlers to the beginning of the twentieth century—Thoroughbreds and quarter running horses. The new immigrants formalized racing to fit the mold practiced at the established tracks found in the eastern states. In 1903 gambling on horse racing became illegal across Texas and eventually much of the nation. The Golden Age of organized racing ended. Texans, and their love of horses, though, remains. 

Anne Bailey’s Texas Turf recalls that bygone era when the most popular sport in in the state was betting on the ponies, and explores an often overlooked aspect of the Lone Star story.