The Key West Greyhound Track was once billed as the Tiniest Track in America, this oval was located amid auto graveyards and cheap trailer parks in the poorest section of America’s most southeastern town. [this was actually on Stock Island] It was the literally the last stop on the road for young pups or aging greyhounds and the gullible tourists who bet them. About 100 people showed up to wager each night, maybe 200 on dime-a-beer Fridays.

There were ample opportunities to cheat, and stories abound of switching the numbers on the dogs or sandpapering their paws.

A guy we’ll call Tony, who worked at a kennel there, remembered it as “wide open, with excessive drinking, drugs and loose women, all with no police presence whatsoever.” So it came as no surprise who could be found there: Hunter Thompson.

In 1992, the health department shut the track down due to a mysterious creek that had sprung up in the parking lot. It smelled suspiciously like dog pee. All vestiges of the place have since vanished, buried under the gentrification of the Conch Republic.

Between Oct. 31, 1990 and Feb. 21, 1991, four trainers abandoned their kennels; many of the 171 abandoned dogs were grossly underweight at the time of discovery. In mid-February, a state inspector discovered that 51 greyhounds had been removed from the premises in violation of a racing judge’s order. The bodies of 15 of those dogs were dumped in the Cudjoe Key landfill before the state could determine how they were killed.

 Owner Louis Stanley Berenson, also known as Buddy, was ordered to close the Key West (Fla.) Dog Track in March 1991 when a sewage system backed up and created a public health danger. According to Joy Mayne, a trainer who had dogs there, the sewer overflowed into the parking lot and created a puddle of liquefied feces 13 feet in length and 3 feet in width. In an emergency hearing before Van Jones, the director of the Florida Division of Parimutuel Wagering, others testifed that the greyhounds boarded there were emaciated, dehydrated and suffering from flea and tick infestation. Berenson agreed not to operate in Florida again.

The long-closed Key West racetrack was demolished to make way for Meridian West Apartments, a nine-building, 102-unit gated community for low-income residents. Meridian West was completed in 2005.

And it was today, 

January, 31 1953: The new dog track on Stock Island, which was built in six weeks, drew an opening-night crowd estimated at 4,000.

That's what happened Today in Key West History.

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