Hazel Park Raceway: 69 years of horse racing, then an Amazon warehouse

The land was supposed to be a speedway. Someone meant to put auto racing on this corner of Hazel Park, the track never got built, and in 1949 horses moved in instead. The Hazel Park Raceway opened on August 17 that year, and for the next seven decades the rumble of a crowd at the rail was just part of the soundtrack of this dense little city in southern Oakland County.

Over the years the oval ran both kinds of racing. Thoroughbreds galloped flat under jockeys; harness horses trotted around pulling a driver in a light two-wheeled sulky behind them. For a long stretch it pulled steady crowds, and for a lot of families a few dollars at the window on a summer evening was about as cheap a night out as Detroit offered.

The trouble crept in slowly. Casinos opened, tastes drifted, and purse money got thin across all of Michigan. Hazel Park gambled on a thoroughbred revival for a handful of seasons, but the math never worked, and in April 2018 the gates closed for the last time. With that, Oakland County’s live racing was finished, and the whole state was left with a single horse track.

The grandstand came down, and by 2021 an Amazon distribution center stood where the homestretch used to be — parimutuel windows swapped for loading docks, the roar of the crowd for the beep of a forklift backing up. Drive Ten Mile past it now and there is nothing to tell you a horse ever ran there, which is its own kind of quiet ending.