Tanforan Racetrack, also known as Tanforan Park, was a thoroughbred horse racing facility in San Bruno on the San Francisco Peninsula in California. It operated from November 4, 1899, to 1964. The horse racing track and buildings were constructed to serve a clientele from nearby San Francisco.
Between April and October 1942, the racetrack was the site of the Tanforan Assembly Center, an internment camp in which 8,000 Bay Area Japanese Americans were detained and processed for forced relocation and internment.
The racetrack was destroyed by fire on July 31, 1964. The site is now the location of The Shops at Tanforan shopping center. The mall has a Tanforan Racetrack historical plaque, the Tanforan Assembly Center commemorative garden and a statue of Seabiscuit.
History Racing and feuding
The site, from San Francisco, was chosen to circumvent a ban on gambling that had been implemented on March 13, 1899, which closed down the Ingleside track in the southwestern corner of the city. The San Francisco Board of Supervisors (SFBoS) attempted to re-legalize gambling as betting with pool selling in July, but the measure was vetoed by Mayor James D. Phelan. Edward C. Corrigan, who operated Ingleside, lost a $250,000 investment he had made in the track, spurring him to start a new track outside San Francisco. Corrigan organized a team of investors, the Western Turf Association, for this purpose; the principal shareholders were banker William H. Crocker and his brother-in-law Prince Andre Poniatowski, a self-styled nobleman who wintered in San Francisco. The Western Turf Association acquired of land in San Bruno and began construction of the grandstand by September 1899, which was estimated to cost and scheduled to open in time for the season in November. The facility was named after Toribio Tanforan, the grandson-in-law of Jose Antonio Sanchez, the grantee of the Rancho Buri Buri Mexican land grant. Approximately 700 men labored to complete the new track, and by late September, paving work had begun for the road servicing Tanforan Park, requiring of gravel.
The race track, then named Tanfaran Park, opened for racing on November 4, 1899. The oval track was oriented with its major axis lying along an imaginary line between the Golden Gate and Mount Hamilton. The grandstand had seats for 3000 with a total capacity for 5000 spectators; service was provided by Southern Pacific on the Peninsula Commute via a stop in front of the grandstand, just 30 minutes from the Third and Townsend Depot. Before races started, the neighboring Bay Area tracks agreed to have half the regular season raced at the California Jockey Club in Oakland (that racetrack opened as the Oakland Trotting Park in 1871 at the Emeryville Shellmound in what is now Emeryville), and to split the remaining half between Ingleside in San Francisco and the new Tanfaran Park track in San Bruno. The track's name quickly was corrupted to Tanforan Park within that first winter season, which lasted just two weeks, holding six races per weekday, from 1:30 PM to 4 PM. In addition, six stakes races were scheduled to be run.
The first season was marred a feud between Corrigan, the owner of Ingleside and de facto leader of Tanforan, and Thomas H. Williams Jr., President of the California Jockey Club, which had been founded by his father, Thomas H. Williams Sr. Corrigan's initial bitterness stemmed from the closure of Ingleside in 1899, as he felt that Williams Jr. had influenced the decision to shut down gambling in San Francisco and in so doing, secure a monopoly on horse racing in the Bay Area for Oakland. The dispute was exacerbated when Corrigan's entries were refused by the Oakland track; as he had been repudiated by reputable horsemen nationwide, the California Jockey Club wanted nothing to do with him. Corrigan took revenge "by making Tanforan a haven for men whose methods have made them objectionable at Oakland", which violated the rules of the American Turf Congress. This included Corrigan scheduling a race at Tanforan Park with a purse the same day as the Burns Handicap at Oakland, which carried an identical purse, thinning the field at Oakland. The ostensible leaders of the Western Turf Association made a public apology in January 1900 after Corrigan publicly denounced R.B. Milroy, the secretary of Cal Jockey and author of the San Francisco Call article describing Corrigan's malfeasance. Compounding matters, the finances of the Western Turf Association were called into question during a trial that March. By August of that year, Corrigan was out after Poniatowski, president of the San Francisco Jockey Club, acquired a controlling interest in both the Ingleside and Tanforan Park tracks.
Second season stakes races at Tanforan Park included the Winter Handicap, with a purse of on January 26, 1901; Eclipse, on February 2; California Oaks, on February 9; California Derby, on March 2; Spring Handicap, on March 30; and Great Trial Stakes, on April 27. The feud between Tanforan and Cal Jockey was not resolved by pushing out Corrigan, however; in February 1901, a "declaration of war" was made when Poniatowski stated that racing would continue at Tanforan indefinitely to draw competitors and bettors away from Oakland, as he felt that Williams Jr. had improperly influenced San Mateo County to shorten Tanforan's season. Williams in turn saw the prolonged session as a violation of the 1899 agreement to split the racing season between the three tracks and vowed to keep the California Jockey Club operating as well.
The SFBoS again passed a measure permitting pool selling in early March 1901, bringing hopes the Ingleside track could be reopened, but the measure was vetoed by Mayor Phelan, renewing the ban on gambling in San Francisco. Williams settled the dispute a few days later by purchasing both Ingleside and Tanforan Park from the San Francisco Jockey Club for ; Poniatowski admitted that Phelan's veto influenced his decision to sell. Bay Area racing was consolidated under the New California Jockey Club, incorporating members from the Western Turf Association, Pacific Coast Jockey Club, and San Francisco Jockey Club, and the last race of the season at Tanforan Park was held on April 19. Although horse racing continued at Tanforan intermittently that fall, in January 1902 Williams announced that no more horses would be raced at both Ingleside and Tanforan Park. However, the track continued to operate, as some horses were kept at Tanforan to prepare for races at Oakland and Ingleside. Williams met with sugar magnate Adolph B. Spreckels in April 1903 and agreed to lease Tanforan to Spreckels for automobile racing. As a result of the feuds and leases, Tanforan Park saw a variety of uses during its early years, including dog shows, motorcycle races, and auto races.
By 1908, Williams stated the track at Tanforan Park would be extended and horse racing might resume after the Bayshore Cutoff had improved rail passenger service to the site; however, the Ingleside track, which had been used to house people displaced by the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, was unlikely to reopen. Horse racing resumed that fall, with the final race of the 1908 season held on November 1.
Air Meets and World War I
In January 1910, Tanforan Park served as the site for the San Francisco International Air Meet, which was the second aviation event in the United States, following the inaugural event held in Los Angeles the week before. The Air Meet was organized by the Pacific Aero Club and attended by aviation notables Louis Paulhan and John J. Montgomery. Attempts to take off were scrubbed on January 23 due to stormy conditions. Paulhan first took flight on January 24, covering in 12 minutes after the storm that had thwarted his takeoff attempts earlier had passed; it was the first recorded flight in northern California. The next day, he flew for at an altitude of between , witnessed by 30,000 spectators, the largest crowd to ever visit Tanforan Park; finally, to close the exhibition, Paulhan took off from Tanforan Park at 3:55 PM on January 26 and flew to Redwood City and back in 31 minutes, 30 seconds, a distance of at an altitude ranging from . Paulhan's flights were taken in his Farman III biplane. After watching Paulhan flying at Tanforan in 1910, Ivan Gates was inspired to begin his career of exhibition flying.
Approximately one year later, the San Francisco International Air Meet opened on January 7, 1911, with American aviators Glenn Curtiss, Eugene Burton Ely, and Charles F. Willard scheduled to fly alongside Hubert Latham (France) and James Radley (England). This time, a new airfield on the opposite side of the interurban tracks from Tanforan Park was used, named Selfridge Field (not to be confused with the later air base in Michigan) to honor Lt. Thomas Selfridge. The military was an eager participant in 1911, having taken the responsibility to prepare Selfridge Field and staging several exhibitions at the Air Meet, including military maneuvers and early applications of airplanes to war, with Latham and Willard shooting stationary targets, then Willard dropping practice bombs within a circle from an altitude of .
The 1911 Air Meet would include multiple aviation firsts. On January 15 Phil Parmalee piloted a Wright Model B biplane carrying Lt. Myron S. Crissy, who dropped a live bomb within of its target from an altitude of as the first instance of aerial bombing in the United States. PDF The first aerial reconnaissance flight was held the next day, as Lt. George E.M. Kelly and Walter Brookins flew at an altitude of , unsuccessfully trying to locate ground troops that had taken shelter in wooded areas nearby. On January 18, Ely took off from Tanforan in his Curtiss Model D airplane and landed on the , an armored cruiser temporarily fitted with a short flight deck and anchored in San Francisco Bay. This was the first ever successful shipboard landing of an aircraft, and the first to use the tailhook system, leading to today's aircraft carrier technology. Later that same day, Ely took off from the Pennsylvania (now pointed into the wind) and landed back at Tanforan. Finally, on January 21, Lt. Paul W. Beck was the passenger and radio operator for the first air-to-ground wireless transmission on a flight piloted by Parmalee; the transmitter was designed and built by Beck and the signal was received from a distance of .
A third air meet at Tanforan Park started on December 25, 1912, with flying exhibitions to feature local pilots Lincoln Beachey and Tom Gunn; in addition to close passes and other aerial acrobatics, Beachey raced in his airplane against an automobile (driven by "Daredevil" Edwards) and motorcycle. Beachey also was scheduled to present a game of "aerial leapfrog" with his friend and fellow stunt pilot Horace Kearny, but Kearny was killed ten days before the event opened in an apparent crash while flying in a "hydro-aeroplane" with reporter Chester Lawrence from Newport Beach; Roy Francis performed the stunt with Beachey instead.
Tanforan was temporarily converted into a United States military training center in summer 1917 during World War I. Camp Tanforan was used by the "Grizzlies", a volunteer regiment organized as the 144th Field Artillery of the United States Army. The Grizzlies held their first muster at Tanforan on August 31, 1917 and departed for Camp Linda Vista (later renamed to Camp Kearny), near San Diego, for further preparation on October 25. To help raise funds for the Grizzlies, aviator Katherine Stinson flew to the track in December 1917 for aerial exhibitions, setting a nonstop solo aerial distance record of from San Diego in the process. At Tanforan, Gunn presented Stinson with a medal from China in recognition of her Asian tour over the winter of 1916–17. The 1500 soldiers of the Grizzlies arrived safely overseas in August 1918 and began returning from the war in January 1919.
Gambling bans and interwar revival