Horseracing flourished in antebellum north Florida only to lose favor in the 1840s. A resurgence of interest after the Civil War sustained horseracing into the twentieth century as it spread to Jacksonville, Orlando, and Tampa. Opposition to gambling culminated in a 1911 state law which temporarily curtailed racing. Proponents bounced back with creative, alternative betting schemes and horseracing continued. With the south Florida land boom in the 1920s, racing moved into the Miami area to stay and prosper. First Hialeah Park in 1925, followed by Tropical Park in 1931, and then Gulfstream Park in 1939 opened to popular acclaim. Fighting anti-gambling opponents, horsemen convinced the state legislature to legalize pari-mutuel betting in 1931, a move designed to boost the ailing economy with much-needed revenue.
While the three tracks battled for the best winter racing dates, organized crime infiltrated the tracks as race horse owners, bookmakers, and controlling interests in the tracks. Expelled in 1941 from Tropical Park, organized crime otherwise continued unabated until Senator Estes Kefauver's investigations in 1950-51. Horseracing survived the scrutiny to become the number one spectator sport in the United States in the 1950s. Sunshine Park near Tampa revived racing on the west coast, and the first new, all-weather track for summer racing, Calder, opened in Dade County in 1971. Tropical became a Dade County parks and recreation facility, Gulfstream surged ahead of Hialeah in attendance and money generated for state coffers, and economics threatened to close the grand-dame of Florida racing, Hialeah. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 56-01, Section: A, page: 0332. / Major Professor: Edward F. Keuchel. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1994.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_77339 |
| Creators | Hamburger, Susan |
| Source Sets | Florida State University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text |
| Format | 346 p. |
| Rights | On campus use only. |
| Relation | Dissertation Abstracts International |
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