Maywood Park Horse Racetrack

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Maywood Park Horse Racetrack was the public face of Maywood Park Trotting Association, Inc., the Illinois corporation that operated a half-mile Standardbred harness-racing oval at 8600 West North Avenue in the Chicago area. The association leased the grounds from Arthur T. Galt beginning February 26, 1946, after Illinois legalized pari-mutuel harness racing.

The track opened in 1946 and quickly made a little history: in June 1947 it hosted the first full harness-racing program televised in the United States. Maywood’s original grandstand later gave way to a much larger enclosed grandstand and clubhouse in the mid-1960s. The Galt family acquired controlling interest in the operating corporation in 1964.

For decades, Maywood meant nighttime pacing races, sulkies, mutuel windows, and an outsized grandstand looming over a compact oval. It hosted major stakes including the Windy City Pace, Abe Lincoln, Galt, and Maywood Filly Pace, and became the first Chicago-area track to host a Breeders Crown race in 1984. A proper local spectacle: part sport, part ritual, part extremely determined parking lot.

Later owned by the Johnston family alongside Balmoral Park, Maywood entered Chapter 11 bankruptcy in December 2014. It ran its final harness-racing card on October 2, 2015, after failing to receive 2016 racing dates. The site was demolished in 2019 and subsequently redeveloped.

Our Maywood Park Horse Racetrack collection celebrates the glow of the tote board, the thunder of hooves on a half-mile oval, and a Chicago racing landmark that went out with one last post time.