Aroostook County's Racing Circuit -- 1910 to 1920

I was born in Presque Isle in 1948. Two years earlier, my sister, Susan, was born. Our mother, Doris Dexter married my Dad in 1943. 

Late in 1948 and early 1949, my father, Keith M. Thompson, had decided to resign his position at Maine Potato Growers and return to Limestone. Dad purchased his farm on the right hand side of the Bog Road where it intersected with the Sawyer Road that created the divide between Caribou and Limestone. Our family settled in Limestone at 249 Main Street on the corner of Main and Burleigh across from the Methodist Church. Dad grew up on the farm on top of the hill in Limestone where his father originally farmed with horses, raised milking cows, managed a chicken coop and maintained a vegetable garden. His father, Arthur Leroy Thompson, known as Roy, raised potatoes. When his sons, Colby, Keith and Curtis started in the farming business, A.L Thompson & Sons (Thom'Son Taters) became a reality.

Perhaps the main reason why we lived in town was that my mother, whose father, Dan Dexter was an editor for the Lewiston Sun Journal, was not terribly prepared to live on a farm. 

When we were young, we did attend the Northern Maine Fair in Presque Isle. One year we were in the grandstand watching Gene Autry and suddenly a bird's dropping fell in my mother's hair -- not a great moment, but obviously memorable. I also remember standing on the grandstand steps watching the horses and drivers on the track. That was my introduction to harness racing. It took more than fifty years for my return to the sport of harness racing. When I was young we played baseball in the field across from the old Caribou High School. I had no idea that the field had been part of a fairground with a harness racing track. In high school, my Limestone High School freshman team played a game down in Houlton on a field that was once in the center of a harness racing track.

In Aroostook County there were trotting parks in Van Buren, Caribou, Allagash, Fort Fairfield and Houlton. Fort Kent held harness racing meets, but the races were held on a track in Canada across from Fort Kent. There was even a track in Crystal, but the track was operated by the town of Patten in Penobscot County.

History exists in places that no longer reflect what once had been. So is the history of Maine's Lost Trotting Parks. Between 1890 and 1930 there were more than 90 communities that supported trotting parks. 

This post presents part of that lost history. The only track still racing is located at the Northern Maine Fair in Presque Isle,

Back in the 1920s, Single G, the horse that time forgot, with two other horses toured Canada and the United States. The threesome raced at the Houlton trotting park. The posts below consist of race cards of the Aroostook County Circuit.

If your family was an Aroostook County family during this time period were they involved in harness racing? An earlier Maine Spirit post listed Maine towns with trotting parks. Explore and see what you can learn about the history of harness racing, your family history and the age when the horse was king!