Ghosts of the Kentucky Derby: From Lewis & Clark to the race's near demise (2024)

An earlier version of this article misstated the year of death of Meriwether Lewis Clark Jr. He died in 1899.

The Athletic has live coverage of the 2024 Kentucky Derby, the 150th anniversary.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. – On an unnaturally summer-like Sunday morning, six days before 20 horses will break from the starting gate for the vibrant and very much alive 150th running of the Kentucky Derby, the deceased rest largely unperturbed at Cave Hill Cemetery.

The sprawling cemetery, a quick 6-mile ride from Churchill Downs, is the first stop of six on a very particular graveyard shift. Kentucky loves to celebrate the great steeds that have made its commonwealth famous. Secretariat is immortalized in a park in Paris, Ky., and Barbaro, the Derby winner who fought valiantly after shattering his leg in the Preakness, is remembered out front of Churchill Downs, where his remains are interred. Aristides, the first Derby winner, is memorialized in bronze in the Churchill paddock, and down the road in Lexington, Alysheba stands tall in bronze at the Kentucky Horse Park, War Admiral at Faraway Farms and Seattle Slew at Hill ‘N Dale.

But to find the real roots of the Kentucky Derby – the people who started, captured and continued it – you have to know where the bodies are buried.

Cave Hill Cemetery, Louisville

A green line painted on the road leads visitors directly from the administrative offices to the gravesite of Louisville’s beloved son, Muhammad Ali. There are no such markers to find a small, ordinary gravestone atop a hill in Section A that sits parallel to the ground, its markings facing away from the road.

Only a collection of French-speaking women gathered beneath a tree tip off where Meriwether Lewis Clark Jr. lies. “Bonjour,’’ they say warmly, before shuffling off with their tour guide to the next stop.

In a city that plasters buildings with pictures of its famous homegrowns – you’ll find Paul Hornung, Diane Sawyer, Ali and others – Clark remains comparatively anonymous. Yet he arguably might be more responsible for making Louisville famous than any of them. Six miles away from where Clark lies buried sits Churchill Downs, site of the Kentucky Derby, celebrating its 150th running this week. Without him, none of it might ever have happened.

Clark is of that Lewis & Clark – grandson of William Clark and named for the explorer’s famed traveling partner. Meriweather, who went by Lutie, did not exactly have his forefathers’ sense of forbearance. Instead, he found an appreciation for the finer things in life after moving in with his wealthy uncles, John and Henry Churchill. Clark enjoyed fancy clothes, a sip of Champagne and gambling on the horses.

Louisville always had a penchant for horse racing, but by 1870, the city had no track after Woodlawn Race Course shuttered its doors. A group of investors approached Clark to see if he could help revive the industry. He used that as an excuse to visit Europe for a year and pick the brains of famous horsem*n there. He settled on a plan modeled after England’s Epsom Derby, pitching not just the creation of a track, but a grand day of racing with a fancy grandstand that ended with the 1 ½ mile Kentucky Derby (it was later shortened to today’s 1 ¼ mile length).

He leased the land from the Churchills, both also buried at Cave Hill, who were considered “two of Louisville’s most picturesque figures, distinguished-looking men, and practically always together,’’ according to a 1920 account in The Standard Printing Company. Clark founded the Louisville Jockey Club, charging $100 for membership, and used the money to turn the 80 acres into a racetrack.

On May 17, 1875, 15 horses entered the starting gate for the first running of the Kentucky Derby in front of a “grand stand being thronged by a brilliant assemblage of ladies and gentlemen.”

Coldstream Research Campus, Lexington

A historical marker explains that what is now a campus devoted to lab and office space once served as the pastures where Aristides, the first Derby winner, grazed. As for the men who made it happen, well, one gets a parkway. McGrathiana Parkway is named for the farm that is named after the man who owned the horse that won the first Derby.

To be fair, Henry Price McGrath, known as H.P., was … complicated. “McGrath is one of the long heads on the turf; a compactly built, cold-eyed, steel-gray whiskered man, who loves a horse and the money he can win so equally that we hardly know whether to consider him wholly or half mercenary,’’ offers one newspaper account.

Born poor in nearby Versailles, Ky., he worked dice games to earn a buck, parlaying his successes to the more established gambling houses in New Orleans (though he was once jailed there for snookering Union soldiers). McGrath eventually made his way to New York, where “army and navy men, and sutlers and contractors, gambled like horseback beggars,’’ according to the Owensboro Monitor. Aligned with more like-minded folks, McGrath made a fortune – enough, in fact, that he gave some to another gambler, John Chamberlain, who used it to establish Monmouth Park race track in New Jersey.

Legitimized with his cash flow, McGrath returned to Kentucky and bought up land on what sits now alongside busy Lexington thoroughfare, Newtown Pike. He established his stud farm, and the man raised in poverty and dismissed as a fleecer, soon entertained politicians at his new mansion fashioned after Saratoga’s grand United States Hotel, the parties so lavish one person referred to them as having a “restless ocean of Champagne.’’

McGrath bred Aristides (named not for the Athenian statesman but for his friend Aristides Welch, a breeder from Pennsylvania) at his farm, though the owner did not think much of his small-ish horse. In fact in the first Derby, Aristides was meant to set the pace for his stablemate, Chesapeake.

Ansel Williamson, who was born an enslaved person in Virginia, trained the horse for Robert Alexander, owner of the prestigious breeding farm, Woodburn Farm. Black trainers were common then, most tasked with tending to the horses. Williamson remained with Alexander after emancipation, and after Alexander’s death worked for McGrath, where he was given Aristides, leading the horse and himself to victory and a place in history. Though remembered fondly in newspaper accounts that reported his passing, Williamson’s final resting place remains a mystery.

African Cemetery No. 2, Lexington

Two black wrought-iron gates sprung open lead to tire-worn ruts carved into the grass that serve as the roadway to a piece of history tucked just off of downtown Lexington. The magnitude of African Cemetery No. 2 lies in its simplicity. It is just 7.7 acres (compared to 296 at Cave Hill), but more than 5,000 people are buried here; only 600, however, have headstones.

One marker belongs to the Lewis family, and though only the names of Eleanora and William Lewis are chiseled into the monument, Oliver Lewis is buried here, too.

On that first Derby race day, Aristides wore a green blanket with an orange stripe, “McGrathiana” also spelled out in orange. He stood alongside 14 other horses at a line drawn in the dirt, who “started at the first tap of a drum,’’ according to the May 21, 1875, retelling in the Kentucky Advocate, with Oliver Lewis, a 19-year-old jockey born in Lexington, at the reins.

Lewis followed his instructions, leading Aristides out to the front to set the pace, but the expected challenge from Chesapeake never came. Instead, McGrath urged Lewis to keep on, and Aristides held the lead to win the first Kentucky Derby wire to wire.

The horse, owner and trainer would go on to more victories – Aristides finished with nine wins in his 21-race career; McGrath’s horse, Calvin, won the Belmont Stakes that same year; and Williamson, who also trained undefeated Asteroid and Norfolk, was posthumously inducted into the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame. Lewis rode Aristides to a second-place finish at the Belmont but, like many of the people buried here, his story got lost until people salvaged the cemetery from disrepair and gave the influential people buried there their proper due.

As for Clark, though his race was deemed an immediate hit, he was considerably less popular. Stubborn and hot-tempered, he clashed with locals frequently. In 1879, he was “shot and painfully but not dangerously wounded’’ at the Galt House, a downtown hotel, over a dispute involving a horse, per the Tri-Weekly Kentucky Yeoman. Though he was revered in his obituary (he died in 1899) as “one of the most notable figures of the America turf,’’ Clark also was remembered for his “spells of melancholy’’ and his inability to properly run the actual business of horse racing.

Sauerkraut Cave, E.P. “Tom” Sawyer Park, Louisville

The fitness trail, stuffed with dog walkers, joggers and cyclists, starts not far from where parents lug chairs from their trunks to the nearby soccer fields. It winds its way past the people quietly practicing tai chi and onward to an archery range. Just off the trail, a small opening into a dense area of overgrowth and woods is closed off by a chain link fence and a strong suggestion not to enter.

Here Derby history wasn’t so much buried, as it was razed. Before these sprawling 550 acres became a park, they were home to the Central State Hospital, which in its prior iterations was known less politically correctly as the State House of Reform for Juvenile Delinquents, the Home for the Feeble Minded, and the Lakeland Asylum for the Insane and the Central Kentucky Lunatic Asylum.

Conveniently, a limestone cave on the property provided convenient natural refrigeration and over the years housed not only the food produced on site but canned goods, including sauerkraut. The so-called Sauerkraut Cave is all that remains of the hospital; the building was knocked down in the 1990s.

Though the history of the hospital is horrific, filled with allegations of mistreatment and deaths, the building was considered an architectural marvel. Designed by Harry Whitestone, an architect with D.X. Murphy, the imposing three-story building was topped by two identical towers.

Twin spires, if you will.

By 1894, the Derby’s 20th anniversary, Clark’s lousy business skills combined with a competition from a boon in racetrack construction across the country and a dismal Derby that threatened to derail the whole thing. That year, Chant won what The Capital called “the slowest and poorest ever run’’ version of the race and the Frankfort Advocate rued that the “Classic Event of the Kentucky turf seems to be in its dotage.” A group of investors, led by William Applegate, bought the Jockey Club and went about trying to save it.

They targeted $100,000 toward a new grandstand and hired D.X. Murphy to design it; the firm turned the project over to 24-year-old Joseph Dominic Baldez. A fan of symmetry, Baldez added the spires to give the new grandstand a more impressive look. Though he was rather nonchalant about his iconic creation, referring to them only as “nicely proportioned,’’ future Jockey Club president Matt Winn promised that upon Baldez’s death, “there’s one monument that will never be taken down, the Twin Spires.’’

St. Louis Cemetery, Louisville

A mere two miles separates the man who started the Kentucky Derby and the man who saved it. Like Meriweather Lewis Clark Jr.’s gravesite, Matt Winn’s is easy to miss. Perched high atop the hill of this massive cemetery, Winn’s nondescript headstone, alongside the curb in the front of the family plot, is darkened by weather.

The ordinariness of Winn’s burial spot doesn’t do him justice. As a 13-year-old, he watched Aristides win the first Kentucky Derby. Twenty-seven years later, he saved the race from possible extinction.

Though Applegate’s new ownership group revolutionized the track, they still couldn’t make the race profitable. In an effort to conserve cash, they cut the purses, but that only made for smaller fields and lousier horses. Applegate turned to Winn, a tailor by trade but a serious horse fan, for assistance. In October 1902, Winn was named vice president and eventually became executive director, ushering the Kentucky Derby into all of its glory.

Winn would rid the race of the bookmakers in exchange for pari-mutuel betting. He dropped the minimum bet from $5 to $2 in 1911, and made savvy marketing decisions to raise the Derby’s profile, such as inviting Regret, a filly, into the 1915 field. Winn also shepherded the race through both World Wars, set up the first national radio broadcast of a horse race and helped cement the Triple Crown schedule.

Upon his death, the Courier Journal wrote, “It was business to be sure, and at times a tough one, what with the rivalries and contentions. But nobody may gainsay the romance and the charm, the high bravura, that Matt Winn brought to an outstanding and characterizing event.’’

(Illustration: John Bradford / The Athletic; photos: Andy Lyons / Getty Images)