The First Horse Racing Track in Monroe?

I just love these little tidbits of history I find from time to time! I try to share them as I find them, so that future researchers can know about them!

Our dear friend old Dan Breard, Sr. comes through again! He loved giving interviews! LOL! His November 21, 1927 interview in the News Star gave me a little information about a subject I have always wondered about. Five years ago, I posted about a horse racing event held in 1839, “…less than a mile from Monroe”. I wondered where it could have been held? Here is what Dan had to say:

Rail fences lined either side of DeSiard street from North Fourth street east, and on week-days one of the sports was horse-racing, which began at the cemetery on DeSiard and continued west on DeSiard to Fourth street. That was the “race-track.” The youths of the day perched upon the rail fences on either side to view the races from the “grandstand.”

Keep in mind, the business district of Monroe in the early days ran along the river from the courthouse to DeSiard, with a few homes a couple of blocks north of DeSiard. DeSiard didn’t extend far east. As a matter of fact Dan mentioned, “A man built a residence where Chase-Amman drug store now is, and he was laughed at for getting ‘out so far,’ and in jest it was said that he was ‘going out on Bayou DeSiard’ to build his home. That was in ’71“. Chase-Amman was at 201 DeSiard!