Pioneer and Union Race Courses
(1851 or 1852 to 1863)
“In 1852 the Pioneer Race Track opened on the site bounded by Mission, Bryant, 24th, and Army Streets.”
"March 24, 1851 - Spring racing season opens at Pioneer"
"At the time it was laid out, there were no streets in the neighborhood, but from a map published in 1864, it would appear to have been bound roughly by what is now 24th (formerly Park) and 26th Streets (formerly Navy) and Capp and Alabama."
"The course of the Union Race Track can be found just south of the Mission and farther south (beyond this section of the map) was the Pioneer Race Track. The tracks were built here because of a shared conviction that horses ran faster on a wet, springy turf. In 1850, between Twentieth and Twenty-fourth streets, Mr. A.A. Greene built the first regulation track. San Francisco’s racetracks were described as “probably not surpassed by any in the world, where especially on Sunday. . . the most celebrated of the fleet steeds of California are matched against each other to the delight of the multitude.”69 By 1852, horses were being brought in from Australia to race California horses on these fast tracks."
“George and John Treat, U.S. army veterans from Maine, landed in San Francisco in 1849 and settled in a remote corner of the southeastern Mission valley, where they lived for many years. As early as 1850 (according to his testimony at a land title appeal hearing in 1865), George Treat built a fence along an old stone wall originally erected by mission neophytes, and thus controlled the Potrero Nuevo tract, including much of the eastern portion of today’s Mission District and Potrero Hill. The Treat brothers grew commercial foodstuffs, raised cattle, and speculated in real estate; they owned very large tracts of land in the Mission District and in the Outside Lands (the Inner Sunset District). George Treat, an ardent Abolitionist and member of the First Committee of Vigilance of San Francisco, also engaged in Western mining enterprises and became a powerful local businessman. A racing aficionado, he built and ran the Pioneer Race Track (the first in San Francisco) in the southern Mission valley in the 1850s. At the end of the decade, George Treat sold the racetrack for residential development, and he likely engineered the passage of the San Francisco‐San Jose Railroad through the land. His brother, farmer John Treat, apparently lived in the house that stands today at 1266‐1268 Hampshire Street between 24th and 25th Streets in the southeastern Mission from at least the late 1860s (and possibly as early as the 1850s) until the late 19th century.”
“The houses are located on the site of the former race track, which changed its name, ownership, and configuration over its 12 years of existence. Opened in 1851 as the Pavilion Race Course, it was re-named the Union Race Course, and by the time it closed in 1863, it was known as the Willows Trotting Course. The angled, pear-shaped race track occupied an off-grid space spanning roughly from what is now the corner of 19th and South Van Ness to 22nd and Harrison streets.”
Bay View Race Track
(1864 to 1882)
"When the Bayview was the working-class neighborhood of South San Francisco, the area was made accessible by the Long Bridge, a wooden structure that crossed Mission Bay in 1865. The bridge stretched all the way down to the Victorian ornate Bay View Race Track and Park. Nevada City mining millionaire George Hearst (yeah, those Hearsts) funded the construction, complete with a very fancy hotel.
At the time, horseracing was a very popular (and profitable) San Francisco weekend activity. The soggy marshland provided an ideal spot for the track, as it was thought to be good conditions for the horses. The track was built at the end of the Potrero & Bay View Railroad (now Third Street). Folk rode the Potrero and Bay View Railway down what's now Third Street and Kentucky Streets across Islais Creek to the track at the end of the line.
“Bay View Park Race Course The Bay View Park Race Course was an early recreational facility constructed within what is now Bayview-Hunters Point. Built in 1864 by several prominent investors at the heart of what is now the South Basin Activity Node in Area B, the facility was constructed on marshland to take advantage of the underlying soggy soil, which was thought at the time to provide a springy surface that enhanced the speed of the horses. Accessed by several graded roads paved with oyster shells, the Bay View Race Course also had a hotel. Originally it was supposed to have been accessed by horse-drawn rail cars but this line was not built beyond Islais Creek until the 1880s. By the early 1880s, the hotel had burned and the race course abandoned. By the time the 1883 Coast Survey Map was published, Bay View Park was no more, leaving little behind aside for its name, which eventually became applied to the surrounding flats south of the Hunters Point peninsula.5 The period of significance for this theme is 1864-1880.”
Ocean View Course
(1865-1873)
Golden Gate Driving Park
(1865-1885)
Bay District Racetrack
(1873-1896)
Ingleside Racetrack
(1895-1905)
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