Okland Park

The Oaklawn Park Racing Casino Resort may not resemble great-grandad’s Oaklawn Park Racetrack, which first welcomed racing to Hot Springs, Arkansas on February 24^th, 1905's, but it’d better because its long road has led to the “Racing Festival of the South.”

The day the track opened, the city declared a holiday and over 3,000 people showed up to watch a six-race program. But as so often happened in the early days of American horse racing everywhere, politics controlled its fate for many decades.

Two years after it opened, both original partners died. Not knowing what to do, the state closed Oaklawn Park until it could be sold. Louis Cella bought it and reopened the track in 1916 under the direction of the Business Men's League of Hot Springs. Oaklawn has remained in the Cella family ever since.

When Louis Cella died two years later, before he could pass the track along to his brother Charles, the track opened and closed periodically depending on the political climate of the day: Conservatives, to no one’s surprise, wanted to shut racing down because of an “undesirable element.”

In 1929, the Arkansas House of Representatives voted on a bill to allow horse racing and wagering in the state. The measure passed by a single vote, that of the gentleman from Montgomery County.

Despite the Great Depression, the city decided to gamble on Hot Springs as an entertainment destination, combining the track with a “health spa.” It worked.

By 1935, Oaklawn was able to raise purses to the level of the country’s best tracks, and the following year introduced the $5,000 Arkansas Derby, the highlight of a 30-day race meet.

In 1941, for the second time in a relatively short span, Oaklawn was able to raise purses to such a level that records were set again. Two years later, the Arkansas Derby purse was worth $10,000.

While most racetracks closed in 1944 because of World War II, Oaklawn remained opened. It closed the following spring but reopened later that year when the war ended for a late autumn-winter session.

When people began spending money freely once again, Oaklawn enjoyed another tremendous growth spurt, allowing the track to finance a major renovation of its clubhouse in addition to a track resurfacing.

Growth continued throughout the 1950s until in 1962, when Oaklawn Park became the fifth most profitable track in the United States. And the positive momentum hasn’t stopped since. By 1965 the $50,000 Arkansas Derby began attracting top Kentucky Derby prospects.

Seven years later, the Arkansas Derby was a “hundred grander,” and in 1973 the first Fantasy Stakes started to become a top Kentucky Oaks prep until finally, one year later, The Racing Festival of the South was spawned. The week-long event features one stakes per day in the lead-up to Arkansas Derby.

The track has not looked back since. In 1983, over $168-million was bet on Oaklawn’s races, averaging over $3-million per day for the first time. Total attendance rose to 1,303,223, a 23,272 daily average. That year the Arkansas Derby was increased to $250,000 and by 1984, it was worth a cool half-million.

To celebrate its 100th anniversary in 2004, Oaklawn Park made national headlines by offering a $5-million bonus to any horse that could sweep its three-year-old graded stakes, the Rebel and Arkansas Derby, and also win the Kentucky Derby. Oaklawn Park dug down deep and paid Smarty Jones a well-deserved bonus.

The track’s zenith peaked in 2015 when eventual Triple Crown champion American Pharoah began his sophomore ascent with victories in the Rebel and Arkansas Derby before becoming the first horse in 37 years to earn racing’s most celebrated prize.

Oaklawn made yet another wise decision in 2019 when began its 57-day meeting later in the year, avoiding some of winter-racing’s pitfalls and ending on a celebratory note with fans coming to Oaklawn for what must be the largest Kentucky Derby watch party in the state.

The track itself is one-mile in circumference with a chute to accommodate six furlong sprints. Two-turn mile races would necessitate a start too close to the clubhouse turn, so races at that trip begin near the sixteenth pole and end at a second finish line that shortens the stretch drive by 330 feet. There is no turf course.

Alas, Oaklawn Park does not live and die with each year’s Arkansas Derby. In all, the Hot Springs hotbed offers 13 Grade 3 events, three Grade 2s, the Rebel, Azeri and Oaklawn Handicap, and two Grade 1s, the Apple Blossom Handicap and Arkansas Derby.

The addition of a casino in 2008, which housed “electronic games of skill” before it added live gambling tables, made Oaklawn Park and Casino the largest gambling facility in Arkansas, for which all Thoroughbred stakeholders are grateful.