Delvin Miller and The Meadows: Harness Racing's Home in Pennsylvania
Near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
The Meadows racetrack exists because one man refused to let harness racing belong only to other places. Delvin Miller, born in nineteen thirteen and raised in southwestern Pennsylvania, became one of the most decorated drivers and trainers the sport has ever produced, winning two thousand four hundred forty-two races across eight decades. He captured the Hambletonian and the Little Brown Jug, the two most prestigious events in harness racing, and he stood the stallion Adios at his farm, a sire whose offspring dominated the sport for a generation.
Inducted into the Harness Racing Hall of Fame in the late nineteen sixties, Miller also campaigned for safer tracks and modern timing equipment. In nineteen sixty-three he founded The Meadows right here in Washington County, bringing standardbred racing home to the region where he grew up and cementing his legacy as the sport's greatest ambassador.