If you drive past the corner of First Avenue and North Avenue in Melrose Park today, you won’t hear the thundering rhythm of hooves or the frantic shouting of a crowd banking on a long shot. You’ll see a massive, gray Amazon distribution center. It’s quiet. Functional. Boring. But for nearly seventy years, this patch of dirt was the beating heart of Chicago’s harness racing scene. Maywood Park horse track wasn't just a place to lose twenty bucks on a quinella; it was a cultural landmark that basically pioneered how Americans watched horse racing.
It’s gone now. Closed in 2015. Demolished in 2019.
Most people think it just "ran out of money," which is technically true but misses the absolute chaos behind the scenes. We’re talking about federal shakedowns, a governor headed to prison, and a legal battle with riverboat casinos that felt more like a street fight than a boardroom negotiation.
The Half-Mile Magic of Maywood Park
Back in 1946, the world was a different place. Illinois had just granted permission for pari-mutuel betting on harness racing, and Maywood Park jumped out of the gate first. It was a half-mile oval. That's small. It meant the turns were tight and the action was right in your face. Unlike the sprawling thoroughbred tracks where the horses disappear into the backstretch for what feels like an hour, at Maywood, they were constantly whipping past the grandstand.
The track had a capacity of over 33,000 people. Think about that. Thirty-three thousand people squeezed into Melrose Park to watch "Standardbreds"—the horses that pull the little two-wheeled carts called sulkies.
A Pioneer in Your Living Room
Here is a fun fact most people forget: Maywood Park was a tech pioneer. In June 1947, it hosted the first full harness racing program ever televised in the United States. A decade later, NBC’s The Tonight Show broadcast the opening night of the spring meet. People weren't just betting at the windows; they were watching from their sofas in black and white.
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It was the "fast track." Because it was a half-mile, the strategy was different. Drivers like the legendary Ron Marsh or Jim Curran had to be aggressive. If you got pinned on the rail at Maywood, you were basically done. It was high-stakes, high-speed chess on dirt.
Why the Maywood Park Horse Track Actually Collapsed
Honestly, the end wasn't a slow fade. It was a train wreck.
The "beginning of the end" started with a guy named Rod Blagojevich. You might remember him—the former Illinois Governor who tried to sell Barack Obama’s Senate seat. Well, he also had his hands in the racing industry.
The track’s ownership, the Maywood Park Trotting Association, got caught up in a federal judgment tied to the Blagojevich scandal. There was this whole mess involving a 3% "impact fee" that riverboat casinos had to pay to the horse tracks. The casinos hated it. They sued, alleging that the legislation was part of a "pay-to-play" scheme.
In 2014, a judge slapped the tracks—Maywood and its sister track, Balmoral—with a massive $77.8 million judgment.
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The Bankruptcy Death Spiral
The tracks couldn't pay. They filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in late 2014, hoping to restructure and keep the lights on. But the hits kept coming.
- The Slot Machine Problem: Illinois refused to let racetracks have slot machines (racinos).
- Declining Interest: Younger generations weren't spending their Friday nights at the track.
- Purse Issues: The track was paying out more in winnings (purses) than it was making in revenue.
By October 2015, it was over. The last race was run on October 2, 2015. No fanfare. No big celebration. Just a final horse crossing a finish line and a lot of people out of work. Trainers, grooms, and farriers—the people who actually make the sport run—were left scrambling.
From Dirt to Prime Delivery
After the closure, the site sat there like a ghost. For four years, the grandstand just loomed over North Avenue, rotting. If you lived in the area, it was a depressing sight.
In early 2019, the wrecking balls finally arrived. The Galt family trust, which had owned the land for decades (Arthur T. Galt bought it for $64,000 back in 1922!), sold it off. By 2020, the transition was complete.
Where the legendary Windy City Pace used to happen, there’s now a 600,000-square-foot warehouse. Instead of sulkies, you have blue Amazon vans. It’s a literal manifestation of the "Old Economy" being devoured by the "New Economy."
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What Most People Get Wrong
You’ll hear some folks blame the neighborhood or "the times," but the reality is more nuanced.
- It wasn't just one thing: It was a "perfect storm" of a massive legal judgment, a lack of legislative support for slots, and the rise of digital gambling.
- It wasn't Melrose Park's fault: The track was actually on unincorporated land in Cook County. The Village of Melrose Park only annexed it after it closed so they could develop the warehouse.
- The legacy is still there: If you look at the names in the Illinois Harness Horsemen’s Hall of Fame—guys like Mike Paradise—their careers were built on that half-mile oval.
What You Should Do Now
If you’re feeling nostalgic or just want to see what the fuss was about, you can’t visit the track, but you can still find the history.
- Visit the Melrose Park Public Library: They have a collection of historical photography from the track (the Brian Moran Collection). It’s the best way to see the "glory days" without a time machine.
- Check out Hawthorne Race Course: It’s one of the last places in the Chicago area where you can still see live racing. They picked up many of the harness dates after Maywood and Balmoral bit the dust.
- Watch the old footage: There are some incredible clips on YouTube from the 80s and 90s that capture the energy of the crowd. Look for the 1994 clips of Ron Marsh—it’ll give you a sense of how fast those tight turns really felt.
The Maywood Park horse track is a closed chapter, but it’s a vital one for understanding how Chicago entertained itself for most of the 20th century. It was gritty, it was loud, and for a few minutes every night, it was the center of the world. Now, it’s just a place where your packages get sorted. That’s progress, I guess, but it’s okay to miss the horses.
To keep the history of Illinois racing alive, you can support the Illinois Harness Horsemen's Association (IHHA), which continues to advocate for the remaining breeders and drivers in the state. You can also explore the Cook County historical archives for deeper property records dating back to the Galt family's original 1922 purchase.