The death last month of Charles J. Cella, longtime president of the Oaklawn Jockey Club in Hot Springs, is a reminder of the rich racing heritage shared by all Arkansans. And that passion for horse racing goes back to the earliest days of settlement. As Bob Lancaster has written, "If you don't count homicide, horse racing was the favorite sport in early Arkansas."
We don't know when the first horse race took place in Arkansas, but the first recorded sale of racing horses occurred in Poke Bayou (modern Batesville) in 1815 while Arkansas was still a part of Missouri. Hempstead County in southwest Arkansas was home to the first regular jockey club, established in 1820, when Arkansas Territory was in its first year of existence.
The Little Rock Jockey Club held its initial races in 1834, with future Governor James S. Conway as president. Soon jockey clubs were functioning all over the state, with a particularly fine one in Fort Smith, where the horses of Elias Rector dominated the scene. One source says the track at Benton was "drug smooth with a 30-gallon wash pot." In 1826 the track at Long Prairie in Hempstead County advertised a "cotton race," in which the entry fee was 1,700 pounds of cotton.
Horse racing got a major boost in 1827 when Virginian Thomas Todd Tunstall arrived on the scene. Tunstall was an early steamboat captain and merchant; horse racing was his passion. His horses, especially the mighty stud Volcano, were famed throughout Arkansas and nearby states. During the 1839 racing meet in Little Rock, Tunstall horses won five of the six races, "sweeping the platter," as C. F. M. Noland of Batesville wrote in popular national sporting journal The Spirit of the Times.
Tunstall's race horses were managed by a free black man by the name of Cullen Manly. Noland described him as "honest and honorable as any pale face," and said Tunstall "has unbounded confidence in him."
It appears that hard economic times during the 1840s caused a decline in horse racing. Historian Michael B. Dougan speculates that was due to the economic decline of "the aristocracy that sustained the sport."
Still, horse racing never died out. Even during the Civil War one Confederate officer took two race horses and a slave groomsman along on campaigns. Lewisville, located in Lafayette County in southwest Arkansas, was never occupied during the war, and they advertised their 1863 meet as "the most lively exhibition of the finest blooded stock and offers a most pleasant resort ..."
Harness racing gained popularity after the Civil War. One such contest in Pine Bluff in 1873 saw a race won by a trotter named Toot, despite the driver weighing in at 210 pounds.
With the arrival of railroads after the Civil War, horse racing became much more of an integrated national sport since horses could be quickly moved from one track to another. By 1891, when Sportsman Park opened, Hot Springs was equipped to enter competitive regional racing.
But before Hot Springs could corner the market, it had to beat out Little Rock. In April 1891, a newly formed Little Rock Jockey Club sponsored a six-day spring meet. The following year the Little Rock promoters originated the "Arkansas Derby."
Then the Cella brothers of St. Louis, Louis and Charles, entered the scene, incorporating the Oaklawn Jockey Club along with John Condon, Dan Stuart, and C.B. Dugan in 1904. Louis and Charles Cella, great-uncle and grandfather of the recently deceased Charles Joshua Cella, already operated five tracks, comprising the Western Jockey Club.
The Cella family had real capital to invest, and Oaklawn Park was reputed to cost the huge sum of $500,000. Opened Feb. 15, 1905, the Oaklawn facility seated 1,500 spectators and offered a glass-enclosed grandstand heated by steam.
Within a short time Oaklawn drove all its competition out of business. A new threat arose, however, when an anti-gambling impulse caused the state Legislature to adopt a bill in 1907 outlawing betting on horse races. For a decade racing in Hot Springs was more or less curtailed, though the grounds were used to host the Arkansas State Fair from 1906-1914.
The gambling and business interests in Hot Springs gradually regained the upper hand by a clever combination of political persuasion, audacity, and maybe some bribery. The Hot Springs Business Men's League circumvented the law by calling the 1916 meet a "nonprofit" civic undertaking.
Anti-gambling forces succeeded occasionally in closing Oaklawn, sometimes for several years at a time. By 1934 local Hot Springs racing advocates were fed up with opposition to horse racing, and a group including city boss Mayor Leo P. McLaughlin of the Business Men's Racing Association, unilaterally announced the resumption of horse racing. The race track reopened on March 1, 1934, Mayor McLaughlin declared a holiday, and national newsreel companies filmed the 5,000 people who attended the reopening. Finally, the General Assembly got the message, and in 1935 it legalized horse race wagering in Arkansas, and as Bob Lancaster has written, "made a respectable corporate citizen out of Oaklawn Park."
The Cella family was adept at managing the track, and Oaklawn prospered. Its first Arkansas Derby took place in 1936, with a purse of $5,000. The Arkansas Derby has become a prestigious race and is considered a preliminary for contending at the highest levels nationally.
Tom Dillard is a historian and retired archivist living near Glen Rose in Hot Spring County. Email him at Arktopia.td@gmail.com.
Editorial on 01/28/2018