When the Puritans left England for the Americas, organized sport was one of the vices they hoped to leave behind. The Puritans abhorred the blood sports, such as bear baiting and cockfighting, that were popular in Elizabethan England; they were equally opposed to tennis and handball and other activities they believed promoted idleness and frivolity.

Spectator sports of any kind were associated with the evils of theater, gambling, and profaning of the Sabbath. It is not surprising, then, that in its first century, the Massachusetts Bay Colony allowed only useful sporting pastimes: fishing, hunting, and military training. Horse racing fell into this last category, since it improved the performance of both steed and rider who might be called upon to defend the colony. Training days often included horse races between militiamen.

North America's first race track was built on a grassy pasture on Long Island in 1665, but horse-racing as an organized spectator sport did not reach New England until the eighteenth century. Officials worried about the dangers to pedestrians of horse racing on city streets or in village centers, and in 1674, Plymouth Colony prohibited racing in villages. Massachusetts Bay followed a few years later with a law forbidding horse racing within four miles of a town center, but the colony never outlawed horse racing itself.

By the 1730s, Massachusetts spectators were traveling to, and placing bets at, races in Rhode Island. Soon Boston newspapers began to advertise meets to be held a few miles outside the city. Within a few decades, races were being held on several sites near Boston. There was no regular schedule, but the races were advertised well in advance; large crowds gathered to watch and place bets. Neither the racing nor the betting were officially sanctioned, but as long as the crowds were well-behaved, no one was prosecuted.

In the nineteenth century, horse racing increased in popularity and regional rivalries developed. When Virginia and then Kentucky emerged as centers of horse breeding and racing, north-south matches became popular. Even as the craze spread across the nation, no large racecourses were built in Massachusetts. Horse racing here was still limited to county fairs and informal meets.

The sport went into a steep decline with the rise of temperance and other moral reform movements in the early 1900s. The same forces that led to Prohibition lined up against horse racing, where corruption was rampant. One after another, states passed laws against betting on horse races; the number of tracks fell from 300 in 1900 to only 25 by 1908.

It was the hard times of the 1930s that caused a revival in American horse racing and led to the first permanent large-course racetrack in Massachusetts. Like movies and baseball, horse racing offered diversion to people worn down by the Depression; unlike other forms of entertainment, it also offered the chance to put money in your pocket.

Money motivated state governments, too. Desperate for ways to increase revenues, one state after another lifted its bans on sports betting in exchange for high taxes on racing profits. Pari-mutuel betting, a French practice of using machines to set the odds based on the number of bets placed, eased fears of corruption.

Massachusetts legalized pari-mutuel wagering in the spring of 1935; immediately the Eastern Racing Association was formed and ground was broken for the state's first major racetrack. Only 62 days later, Suffolk Downs opened in East Boston. With its fast racing strip, beautiful landscaping, and concrete grandstand, the $2,000,000 facility was hailed as one of the most modern and attractive in the nation. On July 10^th, a crowd of 35,000 turned out for the first race.

One year later, trainer Tom Smith leaned over a fence at Suffolk Downs to watch a small, ungainly horse with an awkward gait. Despite the horse's lack of obvious advantages, Smith liked what he saw. Seabiscuit had amassed a losing record in his three seasons of racing and had a reputation for being lazy. But Tom Smith sensed greatness; he leaned over the rail and whispered, "I'll see you again."

And indeed he did. He persuaded wealthy California horseman Charles Howard to buy Seabiscuit. Under the care of Smith and a talented jockey named Red Pollard, the hard luck horse became a national sensation. Hundreds of thousands gathered by their radios to hear Seabiscuit run against and beat far more promising horses. On July 7, 1937, Seabiscuit bested a field of 12 in the third running of the Massachusetts Handicap at Suffolk Downs. Seabiscuit went on to a heart-stopping career that lifted the hearts and spirits of Depression-era America.