Long before the days when Hollywood Park and Del Mar first showed up in Southern California, Santa Anita was hosting races for the public to see in Arcadia.

By now, you are thinking, wait? Santa Anita opened just a few years before Del Mar and Hollywood Park. It wasn't that long a gap.

True, it was not. But the Santa Anita featured in this article is not the track we know of today.

You see, not long after the turn of the century, the first Santa Anita was built in Arcadia, just a short distance from where the current track is now. And was it popular.

The force behind the new racetrack was none other than the man who founded Arcadia himself: Lucky Baldwin. No stranger to the sport of Thoroughbred racing, Baldwin had already been an owner and a breeder, and was of course a successful businessman. Now well into his seventies, Baldwin sought a new chapter in his association with racing.

The result, of course, was the original Santa Anita. The excitement surrounding the new venue reached a high level, as J.G. Griffin wrote for the Los Angeles Herald on December 7, 1907 (which happened to be the track's opening day). "Everything is ready at Santa Anita to receive the visitors. Freshly painted stands, a grand sweep of smoothly packed track, the long lines of green roofed stables and the beautiful natural scenery of Baldwin's ranch and surrounding country to form a setting for it all, mark the course as the most attractive in America."

Along with being hailed as attractive, Santa Anita also met with instant popularity.