4/11/2012
Belle Meade is Tennessee’s best preserved antebellum plantation – mostly because it never fell victim to Union occupation or attack. That being said, the farm’s “crops” were most atypical. While other Tennessee plantations were growing cotton and tobacco, Belle Meade raised thoroughbred racehorses. The human occupants weren’t famous, but one horse was the progenitor of most of the famous thoroughbreds in racing history, like Seabiscuit and Secretariat. In the latter half of the nineteenth century, horse racing was America’s most popular spectator sport until a new sport called baseball turned audiences away. The outlawing of horserace gambling in Tennessee around that same time was the final nail in the horseshoe. The horses are all gone now, which we thought was not made totally clear. In fact, I had to ask about that to make absolutely sure. No horses. There is so much emphasis on horses here you’d expect to see a horse somewhere, wouldn’t you? When we went to Hershey’s Chocolate World they had chocolate.
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