History

The land beneath Santa Anita Park was once part of Elias Jackson “Lucky” Baldwin's Rancho Santa Anita, the vast agricultural estate that defined 19th-century Arcadia. Racing had been attempted on the property before — a short-lived track in the 1890s drew crowds from Los Angeles — but the facility closed along with most California racing after progressive-era campaigns against gambling. When California legalized pari-mutuel wagering in 1933, a group of investors moved quickly: ground was broken in 1934 and the track opened eleven months later on Christmas afternoon.

Gordon Kaufmann (1888–1949), an English-born architect who had emigrated to Southern California and built a reputation designing Caltech buildings and country estates in Pasadena, received the commission for the grandstand and Turf Club. His approach echoed the clean horizontal volumes and geometric ornament he was developing simultaneously for Hoover Dam's Nevada intake towers and powerhouse facade — a controlled Art Deco that prioritized mass and proportion over applied decoration. The result at Santa Anita is a long, low grandstand that reads from the track as a single horizontal band, punctuated by the Turf Club tower and the ornamental entrance gates.

Seabiscuit had raced unsuccessfully at Santa Anita in 1937 and 1938 — he lost the Santa Anita Handicap by a nose in 1938. In March 1940, in what would be his final race, he returned to Santa Anita and won the Handicap at last, cementing his place in American Depression-era mythology. In 1942, the racetrack was requisitioned by the federal government and used as an assembly center for Japanese Americans awaiting internment — an abrupt pause in the track's otherwise triumphant early history that is now commemorated at the site.