Belmont Park

Belmont Park Race Track is a horse-racing facility located just outside New York City, in the adjacent Nassau County suburb of Elmont, Long Island. It first opened May 4, 1905. It is world-famous as the home of the Belmont Stakes, the third leg of the Triple Crown.

Belmont Park and Long Island

The racetrack, grandstand, training and barn facilities are located entirely in the Elmont and Floral Park communities of Nassau County, New York, just outside the New York City limits. According to the City of New York's own map portal, the Long Island Rail Road station on the property, the ramp between the grandstand and the train station, and some of the adjoining parking fields straddle the Queens County line.

Related Topics:
Elmont - Nassau County, New York - New York City - Long Island Rail Road

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The Belmont Park property originally totalled some 650 acres. Because the property stretched slightly into Queens, bookmakers in the track's early days -- when bookmaking was illegal -- could escape arrest from one county's authorities by jumping over the border. It was once even believed that horses rounding the far turn crossed into Queens and then came back to Nassau for the stretch run.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

After the 1956 season, the construction of a wider bus road beyond the main course's final turn forced the turn to be shortened. According to the Belmont publication commemorating the track's 1968 reopening, that move cut 96 feet off its circumference. The current layout has the entire racing course inside Nassau County.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

That Belmont Park is located in Elmont is a coincidence. The western Nassau County hamlet is not named for the track's founding family. Residents decided to changed the area's name from Foster's Meadow to Elmont in 1882, 23 years before Belmont's inaugural. Probably since Elmont was a new, relatively unknown community, the Opening Day program in 1905 carries the legend "Queens, Long Island" -- for Queens Village, the established community closest to the property. Nassau County, in which virtually all the Belmont property is located, itself had just been established six years earlier.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~