Get your off track betting action at Freehold Raceway, one of the many available horse racing tracks at YouWager.lv’s racebook.
Located in central New Jersey in the historic town of Freehold, Freehold Raceway was established in 1853 and features live Standardbred harness racing for trotters and pacers. The racetrack is also open seven days a week and seven nights for year round thoroughbred and harness racing simulcasts from tracks throughout North America. Freehold Raceway is the nation’s oldest and fastest daytime half mile harness racing track.
Freehold Raceway History
It is the longest racetrack in the United States and is a half-mile long. It is in Freehold Borough, New Jersey. Freehold Raceway has been the site of horse races since the 1830s. They started the Monmouth County Agricultural Society on December 17, 1853, and in 1854 they started having a fair every year with harness racing at Freehold Raceway. Freehold’s half-mile track might be the longest in the country. The famous racetrack has become an important part of the ancient town of Freehold. Ten months of the year, live harness racing takes place at the track.
One interesting fact is that racing probably started in the area where Freehold Raceway is now located as early as the 1830s. A lot of study shows that flat and harness racing happened there often, along with the annual fair of the Monmouth County Agriculture Society. Even though a lot has changed since then, Freehold Raceway is still a great place to watch harness racing. There are up to fifteen great places to eat, the third biggest shopping mall in New Jersey, and a movie theater at Freehold Raceway, making it the best place to go racing.
There was a fair with horse racing every year in the Township of Freehold because the Monmouth County Agriculture Society was founded in December 1853. The annual fee to become a member would be $1.00, and for $10, someone could become a life member. Racing took place at the same spot as early as the 1830s, according to study.
Hudson Bennett lets Society a 10-acre plot of land for $50 a year in 1854. At the moment, Freehold Raceway is on that land. After paying for things, the first fair meet had a balance of $286.06.
Society buys 20 acres from Col. W.D. Davis in 1858, which includes the first 10 acres for $3,000. It cost $983.70 to make changes in 1875, and it cost $1,650 to build the half-mile track and grandstand the next year. During fair week in 1884, one of the first polo games ever played in the United States took place.
George M. Patchen, the “Pride of Monmouth County,” set the world record for trotting-under-saddle in 1863, going two miles in 4:56. He was 14 years old.
The Monmouth County Agriculture Society stopped meeting in 1888 because it couldn’t afford to do so. The track wasn’t used until 1896, when the Freehold Driving Club was created.
In December 1895, 52 men from the area got together to start the Freehold Driving Club. They rented the track for $174 a year. Until 1902, when the Freehold Driving Club became a corporation and paid $4,500 for the land, the club held many driving meetings and trials on the track. A golf course was also built on the site at this time.
There was no longer a Freehold Driving Club after 1909; instead, there was a Freehold Driving Association. The first thing on the list was to fix up the old track, which was very uneven and was thought to have stopped many horsemen from racing there.
For many years, the main place to race was at the annual fair, with rare races between local horsemen. The first big race at the track took place over five days in July 1917 and had prizes worth more than $1,000.
People were not as interested in trotting meets in 1921, so Joseph Donahay bought the track for $10,000. People rebuilt the bleachers in 1923 in preparation for a new idea that turned out to be a big problem. The new Freehold Driving Park held trotting races for one week and running races for another week that same year. In the early 1900s, there was a decision that said racing was illegal, but the Freehold group never paid attention to it. As a result, racing fans didn’t hear much about the ruling, and the number of yearly meets at Freehold began to go down.
Harry Gould, a sports fan and weaving label maker from Park Ridge, NJ, bought the track in 1936. He and his wife and son then fixed it up and made it better, and on September 15, 1936, it reopened as the Freehold Trotting Association.
Harry Gould sold his shares in the track in 1941 because he was too into sports and didn’t want to own it if there was going to be gaming. Soon after, Freehold opened its 13-day meeting with betting machines and an infield tote board, which cost a total of $35,000. It was New Jersey’s first pari-mutuel track. Each booth had 24 bets and 15 cashier’s boxes. People from Maplewood, NJ, who work as a builder in Newark, NJ, bought the track for $65,000. He ran the track until 1943, when racing stopped because of World War II. The Freehold Trotting Association started racing again on July 22, 1944.
A record-setting 4,000 people bet $78,873 on 10 races at Freehold’s first day of a 24-day pari-mutuel meeting on September 12, 1946. Over $1,423,657 was bet on the meet over the course of 24 days.
Frederick Fatzler sells Freehold Raceway to Harold and Bernard Sampson of Milwaukee for an estimated $5,000,000 in 1960. After racing steadily for almost 14 years, slowly adding more racing days each season, Freehold became more famous and now has the best drivers and horses in the sport. A record 13,206 people bet $758,719 on August 11, 1962, which was the 11th of that month. Total bets on the meet that year reached a record $25,152,981.
Between 1965 and 1966, Gibraltar Pari-Mutuel of Canada paid $8,000,000 to Harold and Bernard Sampson to buy Freehold Raceway.
In 1967, Freehold Raceway rebuilds the track so that eight horses can start from the starting gate instead of just six horses and two trailers. This marks the beginning of the current era of racing in Freehold.
In 1970, Freehold enclosed the bleachers so that racing could happen all year long with great drivers like Stanley Dancer, William Haughton, and Herve Filion. Freehold was the home of many of the best horses in racing history, such as Albatross, Cardigan Bay, Su Mac Lad, and many more world champions. Every year, the best three-year-old pacers in the country came to races with a lot of money on the line, like the James B. Dancer and Helen Dancer Memorial.
As the sun went down on May 4, 1984, an electrical short in an odds board started a fire that destroyed the stands and dining room at Freehold Raceway. In July, racing returns to Freehold under tents, with 19 nights of harness races from the Meadowlands shown live on TV. The last race is on September 30. The Wilmot Family of Rochester, NY buys Freehold Raceway and all the land that goes with it from Gibraltar Pari-Mutuel of Canada on New Year’s Eve.
For a cost of more than $12,000,000, Wilmorite, Inc. starts rebuilding the new bleachers and dining room in 1985. Along with nighttime simulcasting from the Meadowlands, racing continues under plastic “Bubbles” to stretch the season until January 8, 1986.
In 1986, the Wilmot Family throws a big party to celebrate the opening of the new Freehold Raceway.
Wilmorite, Inc. opens the new Freehold Raceway Mall across the street from the track in August 1990. The whole theme of the mall is harness racing. Kenneth Fischer gets Freehold Raceway from Wilmorite, Inc. in September. Fischer owns Gaitway Farm in Englishtown, NJ, which is one of the best training centers in the country. Fischer is the first harness horse owner to own the track in 30 years.
International Thoroughbred Breeders, Inc., the company that owns Cherry Hill, NJ’s Garden State Park, says in 1994 that it has bought Freehold Raceway for $23 million, using an option it had.
The year 1999 sees Pennwood Racing pay $46 million to buy Freehold Raceway. Pennwood is a business that Penn Gaming and Greenwood Racing work together on.
There were also improvements going on at Yonkers Raceway in 2005, so the Yonkers Trot, which was part of the Triple Crown of Harness Racing for Trotters, moved to Freehold temporarily.
Friends at Toms River, Freehold Raceway’s third off-track betting center in New Jersey, opens to the public in 2008.
There is a harness horse race called the Cane Pace that takes place at Freehold Raceway every year since 1955. The race was part of the first leg of the Triple Crown of Harness Racing for Pacers in 1956, along with the Little Brown Jug and the Messenger Stakes.
There are two races at Freehold Raceway every year. The races start on January 1 and go through the end of May. They start up again in September and go through the middle of December. Jersey has two horse tracks: Freehold Raceway and The Meadowlands. This state has always had the best horses, trainers, and drivers in the world. Numerous farms and training sites close to Freehold Raceway house hundreds of standardbred racehorses.
Both trotters and pacers love to play at Freehold Raceway, which is open for races from August to May. The racetrack has a long and fun season, but it also stays open, albeit on a smaller scale, for the rest of the year with restaurants, events, and great racing broadcast coverage of harness races across the country. It is possible to rent some of the buildings, and the grounds are often used for public events. It is here that the famous Cane Pace harness horse race takes place every year since 1955. The Triple Crown of Harness Race now includes this race, the Little Brown Jug, and the Messenger Stakes.
Off Track Betting Guides
Get your off track betting action at Freehold Raceway, one of the many available horse racing tracks at YouWager.lv’s racebook.