It was billed as a “Gentlemen’s Resort of the Highest Class” in a 1901 advertisement in the Hot Springs Sentinel-Record newspaper. Oaklawn’s original owners included John Condon and Dan Stuart, who also ran Southern Club and Turf Exchange, a popular downtown Hot Springs night spot. Even Little Rock, 50 miles northeast of Hot Springs, had a race meet.īy 1920, Oaklawn was the only track still standing. Essex Park, adjacent to a major train route from Malvern to Hot Springs, opened on Malvern Road in 1904.
Historical data indicates a track called Sportsman’s Park was operating in the late 1890s. Oaklawn wasn’t the first racetrack in Hot Springs, but it’s still going strong today, the lone survivor of what was a fairly crowded central Arkansas landscape more than a century ago. FOR A COMPLETE DECADE BY DECADE HISTORY OF OAKLAWN, CLICK HERE.
