Dayngrous Discourse

When:

Wednesday, December 2
11:00 AM to 1:00 PM

Where:

Brickell Motors
665 SW 8^th Street
Miami, FL 33130
(786) 245-4889

A little bit of history returns to Hialeah. Today Hialeah Park, its most famous attraction, returns to all its glory with a grand re-opening at 11:00 and the first race at 1:05 PM!

I'm heading over and taking the Dayngrous Duo and with any luck I'll have wonderful things to report back along with some great photos.

The History

No one says it better than the Hialeah Park's website:

It all started in 1920 when Missouri cattleman James Bright and aviation pioneer Glenn Curtis began to develop Hialeah by donating land for community use while helping to acquire funds for construction of public buildings, facilities, and, yes, a racetrack.

Thirteen miles were incorporated as a town in 1921. Bright and Curtis supplied water and electricity. In 1922, the first pari-mutuel greyhound track in America opened at Hialeah under the Miami Kennel Club. But in 1924, Bright, Curtis and financier Joseph Smoot established the Miami Jockey Club.

On Jan. 15 of 1925, Hialeah Park opened for thoroughbred racing. Not only did Hialeah include a one-mile dirt track, clubhouse, administration building and 21 stables, but nearby was a jai alai fronton (the first in the U.S.), a dance hall and roller coaster. Oh, and a snake catcher. Because Hialeah was on the edge of the Everglades, it wasn’t unheard of to catch a couple dozen snakes a day near the infield lake. So a snake catcher was hired full time, showing Bright and Curtis left nothing to chance.

The track suffered damages in the Great Hurricane of 1926, but it didn’t stop Joseph Widener from purchasing the track in 1930. Widener, the heir to a streetcar fortune and whose family had been involved in racing since 1890, and partner Col. Edward R. Bradley would invest millions in renovating the track.

Widener took architect Lester Geisler on a tour of tracks in Europe and North America to glean ideas on how to redesign Hialeah, and those ideas can still be seen today.

The tree-lined paths and sweeping staircases were designed after Ascot and Deauville. The lines of the administration building were taken from a chateau in France. The walking ring from Longchamp, the tunnel leading to the track from Epsom Downs and the terraces and balustrades from a casino the two visited in Monte Carlo.

On Jan. 14 of 1932, the new Hialeah opened to rave reviews. It wasn’t long after that Hialeah opened the first turf course in the U.S., and installed the first totalisator system. In 1934, Widener imported 20 flamingos from Cuba to reside in the infield lake. He’d import another 100 in 1947. By that time, Hialeah had more than 10,000 palm trees on her property and more than 100,000 small shrubs and plants.

Not only was Hialeah the world’s most beautiful racetrack, but it was becoming the place for the rich-and-famous to winter. Not only did the greatest horses come to Hialeah, but the greatest personalities.

Truman, Churchill, Kennedy and Nixon wheeled through the turnstiles and remarked on Hialeah’s incredible beauty. Joining them was Sinatra, Crosby, Jolson, Durante, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Glenn Ford, George Raft, Angie Dickinson, John Philip Sousa and Will Rogers. Amelia Earhart said her farewell to the continental U.S., from Hialeah before her ill-fated flight around the world in 1937.

Through the 1950s, 60s and 70s, a stop at Hialeah seemed a prerequisite for any horse or human seeking greatness on the track or a place in the National Museum of Racing. Trainer Woody Stephens was a fixture at ‘Barn M’ each winter for 50 years. Ben and Jimmy Jones began the careers of champions at Hialeah.

It was the perfect place to start a champion or stamp a horse as a great one. The list is endless of those great horses that trained and raced across Hialeah’s hallowed ground. Seabiscuit, Citation, Forego, Bold Ruler, Spectacular Bid, Gen. Duke, Northern Dancer, John Henry, “The track itself is very kind to horse’s legs”, Jimmy Jones once said. “You could bring cripples here and get them sound.”

Hialeah continued to grow and flourish throughout the 50s and 60s after Eugene Mori purchased the track. Mori had the brilliant Flamingo Fountain built and, in 1961, added the Flamingo Pavilion. He brought in an aviary, an aquarium and the Flamingo Terrace in ’64.

The buzz was never greater, however, than when the Citation statue was revealed in 1965. Executed in Florence, Italy by sculptor Thomas Famiglietti, the statue, still proud and glistening, is a 5,955-pound bronze statue mounted on a base of marble

You may remember this historic park if you saw the 1978, Oscar-nominated and Golden Globe-award winning film ‘The Champ’ because it was filmed at Hialeah Park.

Did You Know?

Since their introduction to Hialeah Park in 1933, these exotic, colorful birds have become a widely recognized trademark of Hialeah Park and South Florida. In fact, when the Florida Lottery was started in 1986, lottery officials used the iconic Hialeah flamingo as part of their official logo in the hopes of providing Floridians with a familiar image they could tie to gambling. The Flamingos were also frequently used as the backdrop for major feature films and television shows, including the opening of the hit show “Miami Vice” and the feature films “The Champ” and the hit “Let It Ride”. As much a Hialeah staple now as they were then, the Flamingos will once again take to the air in a breathtaking spectacle known as “The Flight of the Flamingos” when live racing returns to Hialeah Park on November 28th.

The flamingo colony itself was hatched and raised all at the race track. In fact, Hialeah Park is the only place the species has been successfully reproduced outside its wild state. For that reason, the infield area of the racetrack was deemed a National Audubon Sanctuary. Related to the heron family, the flamingo is a wading bird, preferring to live in shallow marshlands. Each spring, the birds nest on volcano-shaped mounds of clay built in a shallow pool on their infield lake. The female flamingo lays one egg a year and both parents take turns tending to the nest during the incubation period, which is usually about 30 days. When the small, greyish-white baby bird is hatched, it will eat its shell as a first meal.

The colony itself has been used as a way of spreading Flamingos throughout North America, with birds donated to zoos in Miami and St Louis, as well as to Hollywood Park racetrack in Inglewood, California.

Hialeah Park Today

Today, Hialeah Park is opening and I'm looking forward to sharing memories with my children inside this amazing park as my parents did with me. Tradition in the making? Perhaps. We'll have to wait and see. Hopefully, the photos we take today will be the snapshots they share with their children in years to come when they return together and make memories of their own.

Wish us luck!

I have to say, once the turkey is taken care of it's a breeze. I'm a no stress holiday kinda girl these days. Freaking out and trying to make everything perfect really ruins the day so I've learned to be a little more laid back.

We had a roasted honey baked turkey, cranberry orange relish, potatoes Au gratin, broccoli rice and cheese casserole, marshmallow delight, green bean casserole, cinnamon apples and biscuits. Dessert was a choice of ice cream cake, sugar cookies or chocolate cream pie. Yummy!

Oh and that picture, yeah, so not mine. But in my head that's what our Thanksgiving table looked like.

Reality, on the other hand, is a different story. Since our table is so small, I knew I wouldn't be able to put all the food on the table is an amazing Thanksgiving display - and I'm ok with that - finally. What I had growing up isn't what my kids have and that's ok. We're making new traditions with our smaller more intimate family. With that said, here are a few photos of our small Thanksgiving Day feast.

This one goes out to someone I know receives my blog posts by email...