Essex Park, adjacent to a major train route from Malvern to Hot Springs, opened on Malvern Road in 1904. Historical data indicates a track called Sportsman’s Park was operating in the late 1890s. Oaklawn wasn’t the first racetrack in Hot Springs, but it’s still going strong today, the lone survivor of what was a fairly crowded central Arkansas landscape more than a century ago.
FOR A COMPLETE DECADE BY DECADE HISTORY OF OAKLAWN, CLICK HERE.
