Hialeah Park and Its Flamingos
Near Miami, Florida
Just northwest of Miami stands one of the most beautiful racetracks ever built in America. Hialeah Park first opened in the early nineteen twenties, only to be battered by the great hurricane of nineteen twenty-six. Its glory came after nineteen thirty, when the Philadelphia horseman Joseph Widener bought the track and rebuilt it in grand Mediterranean style, with a sweeping clubhouse, lush gardens, and a lake in the infield.
It reopened in nineteen thirty two, and racing here became a ritual of wealth and elegance. But Hialeah's most famous residents were not horses. In nineteen thirty four Widener imported a small flock of American flamingos from Cuba and set them loose on the infield lake.
The birds thrived and bred, their pink flocks becoming the living symbol of the track, and the colony was recognized as an Audubon sanctuary. On big race days, the flamingos would rise together and circle the grounds, a spectacle of color against the sky. Thoroughbred racing here ended in two thousand one, and the grand old park now operates as a casino, listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Yet the flamingos never left, and they still gather on the water where Widener first placed them nearly a century ago.
