Mary Josephine Coughlin stood by Al Capone until the last day of his life. She was his beloved and revered wife, “Mae,” even though the gangster’s weakness for women was an open secret and it was common to see him on the street with prostitutes and lovers. Jeanette DeMarco, a blonde who was always accompanied by her brother Vince as a bodyguard, held a special place among these “occasional women.” Capone and DeMarco met at the Hialeah racetrack, one of the gangster’s favorite places—not only because of his passion for betting, but also because it was a gallery of America’s oligarchs and millionaires, where he liked to show himself off in his finest suits and fedora hats.
It is not clear whether the word Hialeah, which comes from the Seminole term Hyllakpohilli, means “highland prairie,” “beautiful prairie,” or simply “prairie.” What is certain is that this landscape attracted Missouri cattleman James H. Bright, who purchased fourteen thousand acres to establish his stables there. His project kept growing: first a few houses, then streets, a school, and the largest stable in the country. Finally, on September 10, 1925, Hialeah was officially incorporated as a city.
The real boom came with the racetrack, the Hialeah Race Track. For its construction, Bright donated 160 acres to New York investor Joseph Smoot, and on January 25, 1925, the venue was inaugurated in front of a crowd of eighteen thousand people from around the world. Access, however, was a nightmare. Henry Flagler’s railroad—the Florida East Coast Railway—would take years to reach the area, and the geography was still so remote and wild that some claimed the racetrack rested atop snake nests. Added to this was the legal battle against gambling, which was considered illegal. And then came the 1926 hurricane, the most devastating in local history, which halted tourism and reduced Miami to a struggle for survival.
Bright, dissatisfied with Smoot’s management, decided the racetrack needed new hands to be reborn. He chose Philadelphia magnate Joseph E. Widener, who envisioned a venue capable of competing with—or even surpassing—those of Palm Beach and Kentucky. He commissioned architect Lester W. Geisler to carry out the renovation, transforming the complex into a lush Mediterranean Revival: immaculate gardens, exotic vegetation, towering palm trees, and a central lake. His personal hallmark was the flamingos brought from Cuba, later immortalized in the opening credits of Miami Vice.
The new Hialeah Race Track opened in 1932 and became the most beautiful and prestigious racetrack in the world. Its resurgence placed Hialeah on the national map, restoring the aristocratic aura it had sought since its founding. The splendor lasted through the 1950s and 1960s, until the city gradually faded. Even so, it continued to host important derbies until May 22, 2001.
Today it preserves much of its original structure and a melancholy that is hard to imitate. The former temple of gambling is now Hialeah Park Casino, where the columns, the gardens, and the echo of an era when Hialeah was, for a few years, the seasonal refuge of the powerful still survive. The rest already belongs to that blurry territory where history blends with myth.
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