Santa Anita Park

Santa Anita Park is a beautifully situated horserace course just outside of Los Angeles with a view of the San Gabriel mountains.

Santa Anita Park was built as a part of Rancho Santa Anita and closed in 1909, and then it was burned in 1912. It reopened on Christmas Day in 1934 as Santa Anita Park. It was the first racetrack in California. Santa Anita Park has 3 tracks. One track is a mile-long dirt track, another is a 9/10-mile-long turf course, and the last is a 6 1/2-furlongs-long hillside turf course. The park spans 320 acres. The grandstand holds 26,000 people, and the infield can hold another 50,000. There are 61 barns for the horses that can house more than 2,000 of them. The Olympic Games held the equestrian events here in 1984. The park hosts many prominent horse racing events in the United States in the early fall, winter, and spring. Some of the things that began at Santa Anita Park are the magnetic control starting gate, the Thoroughbred Walk of Champions, the photo finish, and it is the only turf course in America with a right-hand and downhill slope.