When the gates fly open each May at Pimlico Race Course, racing fans celebrate more than just the Preakness Stakes — they honor a legacy rooted in the vision of one man: Oden Bowie. As governor and a sportsman, Bowie recognized the potential for Maryland to become a national leader in Thoroughbred racing. His determination to build a premier racing venue led to the creation of Pimlico Race Course in 1870, a track that would soon host one of America’s most prestigious races. The inaugural running of the Preakness Stakes in 1873 would solidify the state’s place at the heart of the sport, a tradition that continues more than 150 years later.

Bowie’s legacy is woven into the rich fabric of Maryland’s racing heritage. From his bold ambitions for Pimlico to his creation of classic races like the Preakness, his story is one of vision, perseverance, and the timeless allure of thundering hooves on the third Saturday in May.

Planter and Politician

Oden Bowie (Wikimedia Commons/Public Domain)

Like many gentlemen of his era, Oden Bowie loved horses and racing. His family’s resources made his sporting life possible: the oldest son of William Duckett Bowie and Eliza Mary Oden, Bowie inherited his family’s Fairview Plantation near Collington Md. He was educated first by a private tutor at Fairview before attending St. John’s College in Annapolis after his mother’s death and then going on to St. Mary’s Seminary and University, graduating in 1845.

After completing his education, Bowie enlisted in the Army and served during the Mexican-American War, rising to the rank of Captain by war’s end. He then returned home to Maryland and followed in the footsteps of his father and his uncle Robert Bowie and turned to politics. Oden won a seat in the state’s House of Delegates, serving from 1849-1867, and then in the Maryland Senate before running for governor, an office his uncle had held twice. Oden Bowie became the state’s first post-Civil War governor in 1869 and retired from politics when his term ended in 1872.

In addition to Fairview Plantation, the Bowie family also built the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad, which helped connect southern Maryland to other areas of the Mid-Atlantic, allowing the region to see more commercial development. This wealth allowed Bowie to spend his post-political life investing in breeding and racing Thoroughbreds. Horses like Crickmore, Oriole, and Dickens competed in the Bowie red and white striped silks, and William Woodward, who would breed and own Triple Crown winners Gallant Fox and Omaha, sought out Fairview bloodstock after Bowie’s passing in 1894.

Oden Bowie’s most important contribution to the sport started not in Maryland, but in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., where a celebration inspired a classic.

Sportsman and Visionary

Before he took office as governor of Maryland, Bowie went north to Saratoga Springs, N.Y., to take in the races at the nascent Saratoga Race Course. The area had been a racing hub long before the new track opened in 1863, but this new facility, with names like John Morrissey, William Travers, and Leonard Jerome behind it, made Saratoga an annual destination for top stables. During Bowie’s 1868 visit, his friend Milton Sanford won the 2¼-mile Saratoga Cup with Lancaster and then the owner parlayed his thrill at the victory into a party at the Union Hall Hotel. Bowie was among the celebrants, and history seems to show that this was quite the hullabaloo.

Financier John Hunter called for the evening to be commemorated with a stakes race. Bowie chimed in, suggesting that such a contest should be in Maryland and that he would build a new racetrack near Baltimore for the occasion. Several owners in attendance, including Sanford, pledged to enter the Dinner Party Stakes, tentatively scheduled for two years later. When Bowie returned home, he started the process of building a new racetrack near Baltimore.

The Maryland Jockey Club was founded in 1743 and survived in various forms through the Revolutionary War and into the 19^th century, holding irregular meetings in Annapolis before shifting to Baltimore. They operated at the Central Course near the city on Frederick Pike but decided to shift to Bowie’s proposed racetrack. The MJC purchased 70 acres near Jones Falls for $23,500 and then built Pimlico Race Course, named for that area surrounding the new facility, for $25,000. Bowie’s new racetrack, the one promised two years earlier at the Union Hall Hotel, opened on Oct. 25, 1870, with a four-race card. The third race was the eagerly anticipated Dinner Party Stakes.

Preakness (WikiMedia Commons/Fairman Rogers Collection)

For a purse of $19,000, seven horses went to the post, representing owners like August Belmont, Milton Sanford, and Bowie himself. Sanford’s brown colt Preakness, a son of Lexington, won the two-mile stakes over Thomas Doswell’s Ecliptic, going down in history as the first winner of the Dinner Party Stakes, which remains part of Pimlico’s stakes program more than 150 years later. Preakness went on to race for six more seasons, retiring with a record of 18 wins, 12 seconds, and two thirds in 39 starts.

Three years after his win in the inaugural Dinner Party Stakes, the Maryland Jockey Club added a new stakes race for 3-year-olds to its calendar, a 1 1/2-mile feature they named for Sanford’s horse. The first Preakness Stakes was the second of four races on May 27, 1873, seven horses meeting the starter for a $2,050 purse. H. Price McGrath had Artist in the race, two years before he would win the first Kentucky Derby with Aristides. Two horses, Oakland and Periwinkle, represented August Belmont, while Oden Bowie had his Catesby in there as well. Survivor entered 1873 winless at age 2 and came to Pimlico for his first start of the new season in the new Preakness Stakes. With future Hall of Famer George Barbee in the saddle, he won easily, finishing 10 lengths ahead of Catesby.

Pimlico and the Preakness flourished under Bowie’s leadership until competition from other regional racetracks, like Monmouth, Brighton Beach, and more, made it more difficult to attract horses to the Baltimore area. The Maryland Jockey Club gave up its lease on Pimlico for a little over a decade and then returned to the racetrack in 1905, a decade after Bowie’s death in 1894. A race called the Preakness Stakes was carded first at Morris Park in 1890 and then at Gravesend in New York from 1894 to 1908; in 1909, the Preakness was once again a part of Pimlico’s racing schedule, where it has remained ever since.

Once in danger of closing, soon a new Pimlico will greet racing fans a century and a half after Oden Bowie’s vision gave the sport one of its most famous racetracks and its signature race, the middle jewel of the Triple Crown, the Preakness Stakes. As we celebrate its 150^th edition, we think back to another party where a moment of celebration inspired this great racing tradition.