Walking the track at Rigby Park

On Saturday, my wife Libby and I traveled to Portland for the day. We drove over to the Rumery Industrial Park so I could show her where Rigby Park was located. We decided to walk the tracks to see what was on the Rigby Yard side of the Park. We saw what we thought were sections of the track. We also saw several cement piers that may have been foundations to some of the building at the park. The top storyboard focuses on the Rigby Yard side of the Park. This is the side where the grandstands were probably located. The bottom storyboard focuses on the south turn of the track.

Today was an adventure. I left Hallowell around 8:00 a.m. and arrived in South Portland around 9:00. In South Portland, I met up with Kathryn DiPhilippo, Director of the South Portland Historical Society. Our plan was to drive to the location of Rigby Park, one of Maine's Lost Trotting Parks. We drove to Rumery Street to see how we could enter the former grounds of the trotting park and actually stand on the track. Our first attempt was to try to enter the parcel of land at the upper in of the track. Here we ran into a storm drain, wetlands, and difficult walking.

Earlier we had spoken to Mr. Graves who was tightening the gas line on a forklift. Mr. Graves had actually trained trotting horses in New Hampshire. As we were planning another attempt, Mr. Graves informed us that his manager recommended that we drive on the dirt road that would take us by the railroad tracks that run by the South Portland Landfill. We were told to walk down the tracks until we could see what used to be the track at Rigby Park. With our Google Earth aerial photo of Rigby, we were able to walk onto the property sidestepping wet areas and finally onto the track.

We were at the end of the track with the lower turn. The track still maintained it grading -- the track was higher on the outside edge. As we stood on the track, we tried to visualize where the grandstands may have been located. Where was the main gate and the other buildings at Rigby. Was the Rigby Hotel located nearby? There are still many questions to be answered. However, here we were standing on the track where Hod Nelson's champion trotting stallion Nelson recorded his fastest time of 2.09. Here, in 1894, Directum defeated Nelson in three heats.

More information on Rigby Park will be posted in the near future