The last dog race in West Memphis will take place Saturday. Post time for the first race on a New Year's Eve card will be 1 p.m. There will be little fanfare. The sport will go out with a whimper in Arkansas.
There was a time when what's now Southland Casino was the top greyhound track in the country. I was hired as a sportswriter at the Arkansas Democrat 41 years ago this month, working one floor down from where my office is these days. We had a late-night routine in the sports department. When the fax machine (if you're young, you can ask an old-timer what a fax machine was) began running after 11 p.m., everyone would begin barking like a dog.
We knew the evening results were coming in from Southland. And we knew we better get them typed up and into the paper before the final deadline since there was intense reader interest in those results. The 1980s had celebrity greyhounds such as Keefer, who drew big crowds to Southland. There was reserved seating and an ornate area called the Kennel Club, which featured fine dining for those watching the races.
A greyhound track near the Mississippi River, which was known by locals as "under the bridge," was built in 1926. The formal name was Riverside Kennel Club. West Memphis was wide open in those days with all-night juke joints, gambling houses and houses of prostitution. That early track was never rebuilt after a fire destroyed the grandstand.
A group of investors opened Southland on Sept. 7, 1956. As the only gambling venue in that part of the Mid-South, its popularity soared. Mildred Hill had been hired the previous year as the housekeeping supervisor. She was one of the original six employees. In April 2018, when she celebrated her 63rd anniversary as a Southland employee, Hill told a reporter: "In the early days, it was open on both floors with no glass windows and packed with 10,000 people. There was no air conditioning. That was something to see."
"We were the only game in town," greyhound trainer Chuck Mullen told an interviewer several years ago. "Everybody who was anybody in West Memphis or Memphis came here."
Another trainer, Darby Henry (who ran a kennel from 1956 until 2002), told the same interviewer: "On the ground floor, you would see nothing but heads. They would run buses out of St. Louis and Little Rock. Coming across the bridge, traffic would just be backed up."
Delaware North, which owns the casino and high-rise hotel that's now adjacent to the old dog track, purchased Southland in the early 1970s. The rise of casino gaming in nearby Tunica, Miss., almost spelled the end of Southland.
According to a company history: "During the 1960s, '70s and into the '80s, a typical Saturday night saw full parking lots and upwards of 20,000 guests. Annual wagers on greyhound races frequently exceeded $200 million. Southland employed more than 600 people. Southland fell on hard times in the 1990s when Mississippi approved riverboat gambling. ... Nationally recognized resort casinos mushroomed around Tunica until it became the third-largest gambling destination in the country after Las Vegas and Atlantic City.
"Southland lost a significant number of guests to these casinos, seeing daily attendance drop to about 500. Annual revenues plummeted from more than $200 million in the 1980s to less than $35 million in the 1990s. More than half of Southland's employees lost their jobs."
In 2005, the Arkansas Legislature approved a bill allowing Southland and Oaklawn, the thoroughbred horse track at Hot Springs, to install what were known as "games of skill" if approved by voters in those areas. The legislation kept both facilities from closing. By the end of 2006, Southland had undergone a $40 million renovation that included a 55,000-square-foot gaming room, a 65,000-square-foot racing floor, a 400-seat event center and four restaurants.
In November 2018, Arkansas voters approved a constitutional amendment allowing full-fledged casinos at Southland and Oaklawn. Prior to April 1, 2019, Arkansas didn't have traditional slot machines or live table games.
Southland's current $320 million expansion project includes a 20-story, 300-room hotel tower (the tallest building in Arkansas outside Little Rock). There are 2,400 gaming machines, more than 50 live table games, sports betting, a 1,400-car parking garage and more restaurants.
There's no longer a need for dog races, which have long attracted an older clientele.
In May, Iowa Greyhound Park at Dubuque ended racing in that state. A voter initiative in Florida ended racing at its 12 tracks in 2021. After this week, West Virginia will be the only state where people can bet on greyhounds. Tracks at Wheeling and near Charleston operate with subsidies from casino revenue.
"It has been a long slide for greyhound racing, which reached its peak in the 1980s when there were more than 50 tracks across 19 states," Scott McFetridge wrote for The Associated Press. "Since then, increased concerns about how dogs are treated, along with an explosion of gambling options, have nearly killed a sport that gained widespread appeal about a century ago. A racing association found that betting on greyhounds plunged from $3.5 billion in 1991 to about $500 million in 2014. Since then, more tracks have closed."
Gwyneth Anne Thayer, author of "Going to the Dogs: Greyhound Racing, Animal Activism and American Popular Culture, said: "People don't realize how normalized it was in American culture for a long time."
After this week, greyhound racing here in Arkansas will be just a memory.
Senior Editor Rex Nelson's column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. He's also the author of the Southern Fried blog at rexnelsonsouthernfried.com.
