Tanforan Racetrack, also known as Tanforan Park, was a thoroughbred horse racing facility in San Bruno, on the San Francisco Peninsula, in California. It was in operation 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.