Monday Morning Message with Jason Beem June 22, 2026

Jason discusses the celebration of the 30th anniversary of Emerald Downs in Washington state this past weekend. 

A good Monday morning to you all! Hope everyone had a great Father’s Day weekend. I went to dinner with my dad’s cousins who happen to live here in Richmond. It was fun sharing some stories about him with them and enjoying some family time so far from where most of my family is, back in the Seattle area. 

Speaking of the Seattle area, Saturday was the 30th anniversary of Emerald Downs opening, and it was cool following along with some of their celebrations and memories online and while watching the signal on TwinSpires. I had just turned 16 when Emerald Downs opened in the early summer of 1996, and if I remember correctly, I didn’t go with my dad on opening night, but we went soon after. 

Many of you might not know the story of Longacres, which was the track we grew up going to in the Seattle suburbs, and it was a glorious racing facility. I loved it, and I still always say it’s my favorite track ever when asked. It closed in 1992 after the owners sold the land to Boeing, which they promptly only developed like one little corner of! But we were without a racetrack for four years.

A group led by longtime Emerald Downs track president Ron Crockett built Emerald Downs and got it up and running by 1996, and it’s the last one standing in the Pacific Northwest. There are still some fair tracks in Oregon and Washington, but Portland Meadows, Yakima Meadows, Hastings, Les Bois Park, and Playfair are all gone, as are many of the fairs and smaller tracks. Emerald remains. 

Certainly the isolation of the Pacific Northwest with none of those other tracks around will make things hard for Emerald. With Golden Gate and Northern California no longer running, I believe Santa Anita is the closest non-fair track to them, which is over 1,000 miles. But so far, the good folks at Emerald Downs keep pressing on. 

Emerald is a special place, and a major part of that is the people. They still get good live attendance at the races, and in recent years, some of that is in part to many of the kind of “off the wall” special days they’ve done, like animal races and grandpa races and stuff like that. 

Everyone thinks it rains a lot in Seattle, but truthfully once summer starts, the weather is perfect for several months. If you haven’t visited Emerald in the summertime, you are missing out. When Mt. Rainier is “out,” it’s one of the great settings to take in a day at the races. 

Emerald was also the first place I ever worked in horse racing, when I was a media assistant in 2004. It was where I started practicing racecalling, and it was the last place I took my dad too shortly before he passed away in 2001. I still remember being with him in the bar near the main entrance, him with his oxygen tank on, firing away at the races. The races were where he and I spent a lot of time while he was here, and Emerald is extremely special to me for that reason alone. 

Here’s to 30 more years of racing at Emerald Downs, and congrats to everyone there for the first 30!