The Legendary Racetrack Buried Under SoFi Stadium: Hollywood Park, Los Angeles Documentary

SoFi Stadium rises from a vast entertainment district in Inglewood, its translucent roof visible from aircraft approaching Los Angeles International Airport. Beneath that development lies the footprint of Hollywood Park, a racetrack that connected studio-era celebrities, champion horses, working families, and California's changing appetite for gambling.

The track did not disappear because people suddenly stopped caring about its history. It disappeared because a single, unusually large parcel in metropolitan Los Angeles became more valuable as real estate than as a place for racing.

A Racetrack Built by Hollywood

The Hollywood Turf Club opened Hollywood Park on June 10, 1938. Its shareholders came heavily from the film business, and names associated with its early promotion included Bing Crosby, Al Jolson, Joan Blondell, and director Raoul Walsh. The landscaped infield, ornamental lakes, and theatrical grandstand helped earn it the nickname the Track of the Lakes and Flowers.

Only five weeks after opening, Hollywood Park staged its first Hollywood Gold Cup. Seabiscuit won under jockey George Woolf while carrying 133 pounds. Footage of the race appeared in the 1938 Wallace Beery film Stablemates, immediately linking the new track's sporting identity with the industry that helped create it.

During the Second World War, the grounds closed to racing and served as storage for North American Aviation. Racing returned after the war, but disaster followed on May 5, 1949, when fire destroyed the grandstand. The owners rebuilt, and Hollywood Park reopened the following year.

Champions Made the Track Matter

Hollywood Park soon produced milestones that reached far beyond Southern California. In 1951, Citation won the Hollywood Gold Cup and became horse racing's first million-dollar career earner. In the 1960s, California-bred Native Diver won the same race three consecutive times. When he died from colic in 1967, he was buried in the track's walking ring, making his grave a familiar landmark for generations of visitors.

Trainer Charlie Whittingham and jockey Bill Shoemaker became enduring figures at the course. The grandstand regularly held tens of thousands of spectators, while announcers, bartenders, betting clerks, grooms, and maintenance workers built careers that lasted decades. Hollywood Park was not only a sporting venue. It was a workplace and a social world with routines repeated through entire working lives.

The track also remained tied to popular culture. Charles Bukowski wrote about days spent betting there, and film and television crews repeatedly used its recognizable grandstand and paddock. That cultural visibility disguised a less glamorous problem: attendance and on-site wagering were falling.

The Business Moves Beyond Racing

By the 1980s, off-track betting, the state lottery, and changing leisure habits were eroding the track's income. Hollywood Park breached terms on a large loan after years of negative cash flow. A boardroom struggle removed chief executive Marje Everett in 1991, and new management invested in improvements that briefly restored profitability.

The company then tried to turn the property into a broader gambling business. A card casino opened on the grounds in 1994, followed by investments in other tracks and gaming ventures. The additions generated activity, but they could not change the central calculation: racing occupied hundreds of contiguous acres in a fast-growing city.

Churchill Downs bought Hollywood Park in 1999 for about $140 million. In 2005 it sold the property for $257.5 million to Bay Meadows Land Company, a subsidiary of Stockbridge Capital Group. The agreement required racing to continue for only three years. The buyer had already pursued redevelopment of the Bay Meadows racetrack in San Mateo, making the likely future of Hollywood Park visible from the start.

Seventy-Five Years End in One Evening

Racing continued beyond the minimum period while plans and approvals developed. On December 22, 2013, the track held its final card. Longtime employees served customers who had occupied the same seats and counters for years, knowing that seniority rules and transfers would determine whose jobs survived elsewhere.

Demolition began in 2014. Native Diver's remains were removed from the walking ring and reburied at Del Mar. The grandstand, stables, lake, and racing surface were cleared from a site that had been organized around horses since the Roosevelt administration.

The Hollywood Park Casino survived by moving into a new building nearby. Its name is one of the clearest public reminders of the landscape that preceded the stadium.

From Starting Gate to Stadium

Developer Stan Kroenke acquired a major interest in the site as plans formed for an NFL stadium and surrounding mixed-use district. SoFi Stadium opened in 2020 as the home of the Los Angeles Rams and Chargers. Housing, offices, shops, performance venues, and artificial lakes have continued to fill the wider Hollywood Park development.

The new district reused the old name while removing nearly every physical trace of the racetrack. Visitors can walk through a place called Hollywood Park without seeing where Seabiscuit ran, where Citation crossed racing's million-dollar threshold, or where Native Diver lay beneath the walking ring.

That contrast is the site's real history. A racetrack created by Hollywood money became a beloved institution, struggled as gambling moved elsewhere, and was ultimately erased by the value of the land beneath it. SoFi Stadium did not replace an empty lot. It replaced seventy-five years of California racing.