Good Time Park

Good Time Park. . As early as the mid-1700s this land was known as Fiddler’s Green, a racetrack for Thoroughbreds. In the 1890s Joseph Coates, a pioneer racetrack designer and trotting enthusiast, purchased the land and built a unique three-cornered harness racing track. He named it The Goshen Mile Track. The property was later sold to the E.H. Harriman Family who in turn sold it, in 1926, to William “Bill” Cane, a sports promoter and owner of the Good Time Stable on Main Street, Goshen (now the Harness Racing Museum and Hall of Fame). Cane renamed the track Good Time Park and from the start conducted an annual Grand Circuit meeting (the “major League” of harness racing)., In 1930, after intense lobbying by Cane (whose trotter Walter Dear had won the Hambletonian Stake, the sport’s premier race, the previous year in Lexington, KY), the Stake was awarded to Good Time Park. The Erie Railroad was a stone's throw away, facilitating the arrival and departure of the trotters and pacers, race officials, horsemen, the national media and the more than 35,000 fans who, between 1930 and 1956 (in 1943 it was held at Yonkers), came to Goshen every summer to see the stars of the sport and experience the greatest harness racing of the period. , When Cane died in 1956 Good Time Park was sold to Yonkers Raceway. The Park remained a training center for several decades after the Hambletonian Stake moved to DuQuoin, IL in 1957, but racing was no longer held on the site. The Hambletonian Stake is currently held each August at The Meadowlands, East Rutherford, NJ.