Shawan racecourse clings to the edge of open space, standing guard at the corner of Maryland conservation |
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Headed north out of Baltimore city, heavy industry near the waterfront yields to strip development almost immediately. It’s all there, in row after row, mile after mile of squat, one-story buildings set back from the busy six-lane.
Just after the state fairgrounds at Timonium, roadside lights begin to all but dazzle the driver, flashing on and off to hawk the fares of Mr. Tire Auto Center, Kaylees Piercings, something that appears to be a tattoo parlor but the neon has gone out. Sunrise Nails, Nail Trix, Nail Design, Nail Delights.
Turn off the busy York Road – patience while you wait out a few cycles of the traffic light at the intersection – and take a left on Shawan Road. The relentless commercial eyesore gives way to a weirdly ex-urban asphalt jungle, parking lots as big as the Timonium infield reflecting the sun’s heat outside light industry housed in buildings as big as a football field. McCormick Global Headquarters and Bank of America hold the high ground at the intersection, an Outback Steakhouse wedged between two hotels at the cloverleaf interchange with I-83 a few hundred yards west.
You're startled to realize the former farmland north of Baltimore has been tamped and tamed into a solid hunk of pavement from 695 to Shawan Road, thousands of acres of American industry pressing every direction from the busy harbor.
After the interstate off-ramp, though, something changes. Shawan Road abruptly narrows from four lanes to two at the Hayfield golf club. Keepers of the 18-hole course have primly clipped and managed every bit of the country out of the country club, but at least it’s green.
Keep driving.
Just past the popular Oregon Grille at the turn to Beaver Dam Road, you may as well have teleported to a different dimension.
On the right side of the road, there’s a cornfield, close to harvest, a few insolent weeds poking between the rows. On the left, the Oregon Branch sweeps out of a messy little copse of trees at the northern fringe of the thickly wooded Oregon Ridge Park.
Across from the forest, the land yields to the rolling landscape that made Maryland's horse country famous worldwide. There, 300 acres of verdant, rolling grassland shines in the September sun, a beacon of hope standing as the gate guard to some of Baltimore County’s most fiercely protected open space.
Welcome to Shawan Downs.
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The unassuming property stands at the eastern edge of nearly 20,000 conserved acres – and growing – barely a mile out from what many call the worst kind of urban and suburban blight.
Almost 25 years ago, proponents of the Land Preservation Trust plucked the Shawan property away from the threat of befalling the same destiny.
They had to get a little shrill to get the message across, and to make it stick. “Development Stops Here” was their battle cry. Conservation easement was their weapon. A coordinated effort between naturalists, preservation-minded residents, legal protectors of the letter of the law and water quality proponents was their strategy.
When they won, everybody won.
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‘Development stops here’ – The Shawan strategy worked
Tied tightly to Saturday’s Legacy Chase meet at Shawan, the Land Preservation Trust has worked to protect Baltimore County’s agricultural and rural heritage for more than 33 years. LPT is dedicated to the preservation of the region's historic landscape, open space, natural habitat and water quality.
The Piney Run Watershed Rural Legacy Area sponsored by LPT is the most successful Rural Legacy Area funded by the State of Maryland. To date, LPT has preserved more than 350 properties containing nearly 20,000 acres.
In the summer of 1997, the heirs to Shawan Farms sold 300 acres of unused farmland on Shawan Road to a group of local citizens increasingly unsettled by the growing likelihood of suburban development in the area. They bought the property under the aegis of LPT.
Since then, the fall jump meet, a spring point-to-point and a few other race meets have raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for the Trust and for the Sandra and Malcolm Berman Cancer Institute at the Greater Baltimore Medical Center.
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Meet a few of the founding members of Shawan Downs, site of Saturday’s 20th annual Legacy Chase. Today, they’re as dedicated to protecting the area from out-of-control development as they are to supporting the bloodstock industry, flat racing, hunting and steeplechasing that have long set the rhythm of the region. |
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The Janney clan epitomizes Maryland’s equestrian, and conservation, traditions. Stuart Symington Janney Sr. was law partner to Maryland governor Albert Ritchie. Cousin Jervis Spencer Jr. chaired the very first Maryland Racing Commission and rode five Maryland Hunt Cup winners. |
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His son, Stuart Janney Jr. was one of the nation's leading horse breeders and the owner of champions Ruffian and Private Terms.
Janney Jr. rode four winners of the Maryland Hunt Cup – 1935, 1942, 1946 and 1947, three astride his own horse, Winton. He was joint-master of the Green Spring Valley Hounds. (picture, right, of Janney's 1942 MHC win aboard Winton, courtesy of "History of the Maryland Hunt Cup" by John E. Rossell, Jr.)
“I first got interested in horses through foxhunting,” he told the Maryland Horse in a 1988 interview not long before he died. “My wife’s mother, Mrs. Phipps, was a (thoroughbred breeder of note) and strongly encouraged us” to get into racing. “Mrs. Phipps gave us three mares … Bold Irish, Step Over and Vowed.
“All of the horses I have now are descended from them.”
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Fast fact
Bred by Stuart Janney Jr. and campaigned by the family’s Locust Hill Farm, Private Terms steamrollered through seven-straight victories from his maiden win at Laurel at 2 to the grade 3 Tesio, grade 2 Gotham and grade 1 Wood Memorial to get to the 1988 Kentucky Derby. He floundered in the Derby – finishing ninth as the longtime owner-breeder’s first Derby starter, but improving to fourth in the Preakness before capping his career at 4 with wins in the Never Bend and Damascus in Maryland and the grade 2 Mass ‘Cap at Suffolk.
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Private Terms ©Barbara Livingston |
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Bold Irish was the dam of Shenanigans, who produced Icecapade, Private Terms’ dam Laughter, regional stallion On To Glory and, of course, star-crossed dual champion Ruffian.
A 1925 Gilman grad and Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Princeton, Janney Jr. studied law at Harvard, where he was editor of the Harvard Law Review. He volunteered for the U.S. Marine Corps during World War II, rising to captain and participating in several major conflicts in the Pacific theater. He earned a Purple Heart.
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Stuart S. Janney, Jr., with his wife Barbara and his daughter Sheila, celebrate Winton's second Maryland Hunt Cup win in 1946. Photo courtesy of the Maryland Horse Breeders collection. |
“What was remarkable for my father, he won his first Hunt Cup (1935) before the war,” recalls daughter Sheila Janney Williams. “He was wounded (during the war), and when he came back I remember him not being able to really ‘grip’ with his legs,” but Janney Jr. won the Maryland classic three more times in the late ‘40s with his own horse, Winton. |
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Janney Jr.’s grandmother, Gladys Mills Phipps, owned Wheatley Stable in New York with her brother, Ogden Mills. “Gladys Mills Phipps was the grande dame of American flat racing for over 40 years,” racing historian Michael Finney said in a magazine profile, tracing the pedigree of Janney Jr. “She bred 11 champions and, of course, bred Bold Ruler, one of the single great achievements in 20th-century American breeding.”
Bold Ruler won the Preakness in 1957, his get including Triple Crown winners Secretariat and Seattle Slew.
Her Wheatley Stable also produced the legendary Seabiscuit.
Janney Jr. was partner at Baltimore’s Venable, Baetjer and Howard. He married Barbara Phipps, creating a racing double-dynasty. Janney Jr. chaired the Maryland Racing Commission and was a member of the Jockey Club. He was an avid foxhunter and rode until he was 80.
Janney Jr. died at 81 in September, 1988.
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Stuart Janney III followed family tradition in so many ways: into law, into executive service to the racing industry and into the top echelons of the owner-breeder ranks. To date, he’s owned winners of nearly $16 million, most of them multi-generation homebreds.
He’s got a double-call this Saturday, with runners at Laurel and Belmont Park. Perhaps from one of racing’s most important families, Janney III isn’t the boastful type, dispassionate when he talks about watching the races on the apron with the beer-and-hotdog crowd near the Laurel finish line, and on the monitor from Belmont.
“Sometimes people recognize me,” says this longtime chairman of the Jockey Club. “Most times they don’t.”
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Stuart Janney III, owner of 2013 Kentucky Derby winner Orb, watches horses work out at Fair Hill Training Center in Elkton, Maryland. (©Kim Hairston, Baltimore Sun)
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Janney III was named Jockey Club chair in 2015, succeeding cousin Ogden Mills Phipps. He chaired the group’s Thoroughbred Safety Committee 2008-2016.
He was appointed to the Equibase Management Committee in 2016 and serves on the
board of directors for Grayson-Jockey Club Research Foundation.
He serves on the New York Racing Association and King Ranch Inc. boards, and was chair of the Thoroughbred Owners and Breeders Association.
He studied at University of North Carolina Chapel Hill and earned a law degree at the University of Maryland. He joined Niles, Barton and Wilmer in 1977 where he became partner, and went on to managing director of Alex Brown and Sons. In 1995, he became chair of Bessemer Trust, the wealth management company begun by his great grandfather, Henry Phipps, in 1907.
When Janney III’s parents died within a year of each other in the late 1980s, it forced him him to decide if he wanted to continue the racing tradition.
“I recognized that if I let it disperse, I would probably not pick it up again,” he told the Blood-Horse.
When his parents died, Janney III’s uncle, Ogden Phipps, offered to be his partner in any horses he purchased, connecting him with trainer Shug McGaughey.
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Horses and riders walk past the Janney-Phipps Racing Stables at Fair Hill Training Center in Elkton, Maryland. (©Kim Hairston, Baltimore Sun)
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Janney III campaigned, in his name or in partnership with Phipps Stable, standouts 2013 Kentucky Derby winner Orb, Air Support, Carriage Trail, Coronado’s Quest, Criminologist and more. |
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Janney III on protecting the land, ‘the most important thing a family is entrusted with’
Stuart Janney III helped walk his family’s Locust Hill farm through the Land Preservation Trust process, becoming one of the first conservation easements in Maryland.
“This was cutting edge back then, in the early ‘80s,” he says. The complexity wasn’t in the actual transaction, Janney III explains, but in the valuation of the property before and after limiting its development potential.
Indeed, the IRS famously challenged appraisals for Maryland preservation properties a few years later, something Janney III jumped to defend. “It never went to trial, actually,” he says, noting that the IRS quailed in the face of the piles of well-documented and well-supported appraisals he was ready to present in court.
It set a strong and positive precedent for future land trust gifts, something that’s driven nearly 20,000 contiguous acres of protected land in Maryland’s Hunt Valley and Green Spring Valley.
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A set of Jack Fisher trainees at Locust Hill Farm in April 2020. ©Carol Fenwick |
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“It means everything (to win a Triple Crown race) in the sense that the Kentucky Derby is kind of the pinnacle of the sport,” Janney III told a Washington Post reporter. “Orb goes back to my grandmother, through my parents.
“In a sense, whatever’s been accomplished has been accomplished because of all of those people who came before us. If you go back to his horse’s great-grandmother, five generations, this was a mare my grandmother owned and gave to my parents in the late 1950s, early 1960s.” To win one of the world’s most recognizable races, Janney III added, was, mostly, "a huge relief. Well, some relief and some disbelief.”
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Orb winning the 2013 Kentucky Derby, with Joel Rosario in the irons. |
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Fun fact
Stuart Janney III is passionate about horse racing, but he’s equally enamored with being on the water. When interviewed for this article by the TGSF, he’d just disembarked from his beloved On Leave, an 80-foot motorcraft he keeps in Northeast Harbor, Maine in the summers, in Palm Beach, Florida in the winters, and in Annapolis, Maryland during the shoulder seasons.
Janney III and one crew member relocate the boat four times a year. “I like to do it myself,” Janney says, explaining that they travel some of the route on the Intercoastal Waterway and cross bays and sounds but spend part of the time in the open waters of the Atlantic. “It’s fun.”
On Leave, the boat, is named for On Leave, the horse. On Leave is a 2013 homebred daughter of War Front out of the A.P. Indy mare, Meghan’s Joy. The gray mare won eight races worth more than $1 million for her owner-breeder, and was a multiple graded stakes winner. (Cheslea Durand / NYRA photo, above)
She’s currently at Claiborne Farm in Kentucky, in foal to Uncle Mo.
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Like her brother, Stuart Janney III, Sheila Janney Williams is a life founding member Shawan Downs. She’s looking forward to Saturday’s races, with several horses running in her colors, and many more trained by her son-in-law, Jack Fisher.
The family has a railside box, says daughter Sheila Williams Fisher, though at any given time, there might not be anybody in it. “It’ll be a busy day,” say both Sheilas. “The weather forecast is amazing,” Sheila Fisher says. “We deserve it.”
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Sheila Janney Williams, Rufus Williams, and Dr. John R.S. Fisher in the paddock at the 1991 Maryland Hunt Cup. The Williams' Free Runner, trained and ridden by Jack Fisher, ran that year. ©Douglas Lees |
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Sheila Williams has had top horses through the years, running both in her name, her Dover Ridge Farm and in partnership with friends. Her Call Louis won the 1989 Virginia Gold Cup; her Gus's Boy repeated in 1991, and Push and Pull - who ran under Dover Ridge Farm, won in 1992.
Williams campaigned standout timber star Straight To It in partnership with Andre Brewster - he won the New Jersey Hunt Cup in 2012, the stake at Colonial Cup in 2014.
Last year, Storm Team - owned in partnership with Northwoods Stables, won the Virginia Gold Cup, coming back this June to win the timber stake at Iroquois. DASH Stable, originally named for "Dad and Sheila" connected husband Rufus and daughter Sheila Fisher. Rufus died in 2018, but DASH carries on with Sheila Williams in partnership with Sheila Fisher.
Prayer Hope runs in Saturday's ratings hurdle for DASH. DASH Stable won the 2015 NSA 3-year-old title with Ice It.
Sheila Williams was married to Rufus MacQueen Gibbs Williams for 61 years.
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1992 Virginia Gold Cup presentation: Senator John Warner behind the trophy next to Sheila Williams, Sheila Fisher and Rufus Williams. Williams' Push and Pull won the race ridden and trained by Jack Fisher.
©Douglas Lees
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Fun fact
When Storm Team runs in the timber stake Saturday, he’ll carry more than rider Graham Watters and the 165-pound impost. (photo, above, of Storm Team and Watters at the 2021 Queens Cup races. ©Tod Marks)
He’ll carry the weight of history.
Storm Team, owned in partnership by Sheila Williams and Northwoods Stables, runs in the famed red and white Janney silks Williams inherited from her father. Williams registered the colors with NSA; her brother Stuart Janney III uses the same silks on the flat.
Sheila Williams recalls the most famous horse to race in those silks – her father’s homebred, dual champion Ruffian.
Williams says those years were magic. “She was big as a foal,” born at Claiborne April 17, 1972. Williams remembers her “granny and grandfather being very excited about her. She ran against the girls and beat all of them.
“They were the best times.”
Ruffian was 2-year-old distaff champion in ‘74, and freshman distaff champ in ‘75. She swept the New York filly Triple Crown that spring.
Ruffian suffered a fatal breakdown in a match race at Belmont Park July 6, 1975 with that year’s Kentucky Derby winner, Foolish Pleasure.
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Sheila Fisher was recently appointed joint-master of the Green Spring Valley Hounds. ©Carol Fenwick |
Fun fact
Sheila Williams Fisher admits she was a somewhat reluctant college student. Her parents – Rufus and Sheila Williams, had basically ordered her to go. “They told me, ‘you’re doing four years,’ period. They wouldn’t let me just stay in the horse business,” says Fisher, now 59. The Garrison grad and Maryland native headed out of state to the University of Vermont.
At Vermont, she started out studying mass communications but ended up in the political science department, something that led to an eye-opening trip of a lifetime.
Her junior year, Fisher did a semester abroad in Vienna, Austria. While there, her school group got a chance to travel behind the Iron Curtain – still seven years away from its fall in 1989. They traveled to Russia, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Poland.
It was unnerving to see the effects of communism close-up, Fisher recalls. They’d studied it in school, but nothing prepared her for the harsh reality of the alleged “fair share system” viewed in person.
“It didn’t really work,” she says. “We saw it.
“We traveled by bus, and at every stop ... we'd sit for hours while they went through our bags. They’d confiscate our schoolbooks and our novels. I remember them taking one person’s bible.
“You’d see spiked fences around grain fields, barbed wire everywhere. We’d be in (our hotel) eating dinner, and you could see a long line out in the street of pretty much starving people waiting in a line somewhere for food.
“It was awful.”
Sheila jumped back into the steeplechase world when she got out of school, working for Dr. John Fisher, Ron Houghton, Russell Jones, Betty Byrd, Tom Voss and others before marrying eventual 14-time champion jump trainer Jack Fisher in 1992.
They live and train at Janney’s historic Locust Hill on Butler Road across from the Grand National course, a few miles from Shawan Downs and squarely in the area protected by the Land Preservation Trust that’s been so important for so long to her family and others in the region.
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Hall of Fame trainer Jack Fisher, a board member for the Land Preservation Trust, appreciates the protection the Shawan property provides for Maryland hunt country north of Baltimore. He and wife Sheila (pictured, left, at Shawan Downs in 2018. ©Carol Fenwick) now live at the historic Locust Hill family farm, 400 of some 20,000 acres conserved by the LPT.
Fisher says he appreciates the protection provided by the Shawan property, and he appreciates the sweeping racecourse, well-canted turns on a 1 1/8-mile, right-handed oval.
"The turf is excellent after (this week's) rain," he says, adding that Shawan installed an irrigation system when it was developed two decades ago, but turf growth conditions this spring and summer were good without added moisture.
He has nine entered for Saturday, including two in the timber stake, Storm Team and Virginia Gold Cup winner Schoodic.They'll be using "the long course" this weekend for the two timber races -- both at 3 1/8 miles over 17 fences.
Shawan uses unique, portable breakaway timber jumps in the 3/8-mile homestretch, traditional Maryland post-and-rail around the rest of the course.
Fisher says the Temple Gwathmey Steeplechase Foundation is helping fund a second $15,000 purse for an over-subscribed maiden hurdle that has been split into two divisions.
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The maiden timber field at the 2020 Shawan Downs Point-to-Point.
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