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Today there is only one race course in Jamaica - Caymanas Park; in the past there were at least three main race courses, and other smaller tracks all across the parishes of the island. On this page information on the various old-time tracks will gradually be published, as I get the research done.

Writing in 1833, in Eighteen Months in Jamaica, Theodore Foulkes described the races in Jamaica at that time:

   Jamaica affords but little variety of amusement. A race, however, is a thing not quite

hors de combat, as every parish can boast of its "course;" but the country races are

very inferior to those of Kingston and Spanish Town. At the latter places, a large

concourse of people assembles. Fashionables consisting of gentlemen on horseback,

and of ladies in open carriages, regardless of the oppressive heat, and of the clouds

of dust in which they are enveloped, join in the gay scene; while the rest of the multitude

"black, brown, and yellow," exhibit themselves, some on mule back, some on foot, and

some in strangely constructed vehicles.

This sort of thing is, however, conducted in a very different style from a race in England.

Bootless jockeys buckle their spurs on naked ankles, and consider it to be the acme of

good jockeyship to carry the horse round the course at the top of his speed, without

the least regard to scientific horsemanship. There are no booths for Rouge et Noir nor

Hazard where "gentlemen sportsmen" are invited to play from "one shilling to a thousand

pounds." No tables for "thimble-rig" as that is a pitch of refinement not yet reached. The

lower order of speculators is contented with "tossing up" a bit, a ten pence, or a macaroni;

and the higher grade will bet a two dollar piece, a pistole, a half joe, or even a doubloon.

 Horse-racing was a popular sport in Jamaica during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and several properties had their own race courses.

Jamaica Surveyed, B.W.Higman, 2001