A tale of two tracks

Goshen — Last week’s page 1 article announcing Chris Tully’s hire to manager at Goshen’s Historic Track contained some errors. Goshen resident John Meyer noted that the Historic Track is not the oldest track in the world, but the oldest active track. In addition, the Hambletonian Stakes were never held at Historic Track but at Good Time Park, once located between Greenwich Avenue and South Street but no longer in existence. Please see page 12 for Meyer’s letter. Gail Cunard, the director of the Harness Racing Museum and Hall of Fame in Goshen, noted in an e-mailed message that “the Historic Track is a half-mile track and the Hambletonian Stake’s conditions stipulate it must be raced on a mile track, which is exactly what the Good Time Park track between South Street and Route 207 is.” Cunard reports that volunteers are now at work on an historic marker to be placed on the Heritage Trail at South Street to indicate the location of Good Time Park and the Hambletonian Stakes. The wording for the marker is provided in the sidebar.

Good Time Park
As early as the mid-1700s this land was known as Fiddler’s Green, a racetrack for Thoroughbreds.
In the 1890s Joseph Coates, a pioneer racetrack designer and trotting enthusiast, purchased the land and built a unique three-cornered harness racing track. He named it the Goshen Mile Track.
The property was later sold to the E.H. Harriman Family who in turn sold it, in 1926, to William “Bill” Cane, a sports promoter and owner of the Good Time Stable on Main Street, Goshen (now the Harness Racing Museum & Hall of Fame).
Cane renamed the track Good Time Park and from the start conducted an annual Grand Circuit meeting (the “major league” of harness racing).
In 1930, after intense lobbying by Cane (whose trotter Walter Dear had won the Hambletonian Stake, the sport’s premier race, the previous year in Lexington, KY), the Stake was awarded to Good Time Park.
The Erie Railroad was a stone’s throw away, facilitating the arrival and departure of the trotters and pacers, race officials, horsemen, the national media and the more than 35,000 fans who, between 1930 and 1956 (in 1943 it was held at Yonkers), came to Goshen every summer to see the stars of the sport and experience the greatest harness racing of the period.
When Cane died in 1956 Good Time Park was sold to Yonkers Raceway.
The Park remained a training center for several decades after the Hambletonian Stake moved to DuQuoin, IL in 1957, but racing was no longer held on the site.
The Hambletonian Stake is currently held each August at the Meadowlands, East Rutherford, NJ.