Fairfield has betting history
Local mills closed so workers could attend noon races during the 1870s
Copyright © 2002 Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc.
FAIRFIELD — If casino gambling ever comes to town, it won't be the first bet ever wagered in this Somerset County community.
Staff photo by DAVID LEAMINGMark McPheters, a director at the Fairfield Historical Society, holds an old advertisement of the Fairfield Park that featured harness racing. click to enlarge
Historians say there were busy gaming tables at the old Gerald Hotel, which opened on Main Street in 1900 when Fairfield was at the confluence of three major trolley car lines.
But before that, dating back to the 1870s, there was harness racing in Fairfield, featuring large cash purses and attracting participants and gamblers from all over the Northeast.
The race track was called Fairfield Trotting Park and it was located on West Street, just south of the football field — Keyes Field —where Lawrence High School now lies.
Old maps of Fairfield show the park with its half-mile oval track, its long grandstand and high judges tower.
Maurice & Sons auto body shop on West Street sits on land that bordered the Trotting Park. The old park is mentioned in real estate transfer documents as late as 1964, around the time the new high school was built.
The park itself, which once was so popular the local mills would shut down at noon on racing day, is now a tangle of woods and weeds bordering the school athletic fields and some of what later became Savage Street.
An advertising poster from 1891 displayed recently at the Fairfield Historical Society by director Mark McPheters shows horses and drivers racing for the finish line and purses of $100 to $250, attractive sums for the times.
"Come see the best racing of the season of 1891 in the state," the poster states. Each 1-mile heat at the Trotting Park was run under the rules of the National Trotting Association.
Race money was divided with 50 percent going to the first-place horse and 25 percent to the second-place horse. The rest went to the third- and fourth-place horses, which took in 15 and 10 percent respectively.
The track proprietor was C.B. Hartford of Fairfield.
Ralph Canney, program manager for the Maine Harness Racing Commission, said purses equaling $250 were rare for the 1890s.
"That would have been a wicked big purse for the day," Canney said of the prizes listed on the poster.
Canney said in the old days of harness racing, before state sponsored parimutuel betting, race horse owners would race for grain or other barter items or for cash. Parimutuel is a form of betting on horse racing in which those holding winning tickets divide the total amount bet less a percentage for such things as the management and taxes.
Spectators would place bets with "books," later known as bookies, or they would bet among themselves, according to Canney. In fact, he said, the phrase parimutuel is French for "among ourselves."
He said bookies would wander the fair grounds taking wagers and setting odds based on past performances of a given horse and its driver. Word of mouth also spread the prospect of racing and a potential pay day, Canney added.
"They bet amongst themselves until the state realized it could make money," he said. "They regulated it and it became an industry. It was one of the few legalized gambling opportunities."
Sheridan Smith, 66, of Farmington, who drove horses in harness races beginning at age 15, said he remembers his father talking about betting on horses before parimutuel betting was introduced in 1935.
"I know they would bet amongst themselves," said Smith, who is on the Board of Directors for the Maine Horsemen's Association. "I know my father would bet. He bet once when I raced on ice in Gardiner in the 1950s."
Where there was horse racing there was betting, added Doug Clendenning, 83, of Bangor who has an interest in harness racing at Bass Park.
"They were just betting amongst themselves, the way they took bets," he said. "If you knew the right people you made a bet."
Harness racing at Trotting Park was such a part of life in Fairfield in the 1890s that it actually may have saved some lives on a hot summer day in August 1895.
"The mill in town closed at noon to allow their employees a chance to attend the races," historians wrote in the town's 200th anniversary booklet in 1988. "The town was full of people and it was a hot day."
Fire broke out in what was known as Phillips Mill and in no time the entire series of mills near the downtown area was ablaze. After a century of progress, the principal mills of Fairfield "were consumed by flames, never to rise from the ashes," according to the booklet.
Had the mills not closed at noon that day for racing at Trotting Park on West Street, it is a good bet to assume the damage, in human terms, would have been far greater.
Doug Harlow — 861-9244 dharlow@centralmaine.com