Fair Hill Training Center

Fair Hill -- Much has been made of the serene setting where Kentucky Derby winner and Preakness darling Barbaro has been training at the Fair Hill Training Center in the northern reaches of the state. While other stakes horses are often quartered and trained in the more competitive atmosphere of racetracks, Barbaro resides and works in a decidedly quieter, more pastoral place where the contrasting gentle pace has become a subplot in the dark bay colt's Triple Crown quest. That the 350-acre training center exists at all - along with an adjoining public recreation area nearly 16 times larger - is the result of the ambitious, even obsessive, accumulation of land in the first half of the 20th century by a scion of one of America's wealthiest families and later, a fortuitous purchase by the state.