Sunset: A Winner by the Sea: on the Southern California coast, Del Mar is a haven for beachcombers, gardeners

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A Winner by the Sea: on the Southern California coast, Del Mar is a haven for beachcombers, gardeners—and fans of fast, fast horses

Peter Jensen

"I used to ride my saddle horse for miles along the beach to Torrey Pines State Reserve," Fae Sanger says as she gazes across the Del Mar Racetrack toward the ocean. "Some of the trainers used to take thoroughbreds out to walk in the surf."

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While waiting for the next race, Sanger and her Del Martian friend Don Terwilliger fondly recall the track's--as well as this Southern California beach town's--storied past. Terwilliger and Sanger were present as youngsters when Seabiscuit beat Ligaroti in the 1938 match race that cemented the reputation of both the racetrack and the town. Terwilliger grew up in Del Mar and was smitten with horse-racing fever as a young boy when he and 20,000 other fans jammed the track to watch the 'Biscuit win by a nose, breaking the track record by four seconds.

Sixty-six years later, you don't often see horses on the beach, and Sanger has grown suddenly sanguine about her chances in the next race. She advises her guests to bet on an up-and-comer named Decisional but cautions, "I've owned horses and I've been around 'em all my life, but I'm still a $2 bettor. Nobody knows for sure what a horse is going to do. The old saying holds true: 'There are a thousand ways to lose a race and only one way to win.'"

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The town of Del Mar may be the perfect foil for the track's vicissitudes. It sits on a sandstone mesa between two coastal lagoons, only 20 miles north of downtown San Diego but in mood a world apart. Laid out before the bulldozer became the favored steed of Southern California home builders, Del Mar's narrow lanes and winding roads with names like Crest, Serpentine, and Zapo have kept their early-20th-century feel. The weather also plays an unchanging role: Very little rain falls, and the days are usually warm and sunny, except for May and June, when moist, overcast air over a cool ocean battles it out with inland heat to see which retreats first. It's the kind of temperate climate that people, as well as the area's famed Torrey pine trees, find perfectly attractive.

Many people find it attractive even at 6 a.m. On a typical morning at Stratford Court Cafe, my wife and I--halfway through our daily walk--stumble bleary-eyed into a warm den of conversation, rustling newspapers, and laptops wirelessly viewing the day's surf report. Already we've seen several people we know.

Jim, the baker, tapped his horn as he drove by, his truck stuffed full of sourdough bread from his O'Brien's Boulangerie. Marcia, the hospital CEO in her favorite holey sweatshirt, took off her headphones to chat for a minute before tackling the winding streets and lanes that lead back to her home near the top of the hill. The elderly "maintenance guy," who's often out watering the flower beds at a complex of shops and offices on the main drag, Camino Del Mar, crimped his hose so we could pass unscathed. We know he's really the owner and the property's worth millions, but he's old-school, like a lot of the people in town who dress casually, nurse a beater convertible to the beach, take care of their own yards, and keep a sharp eye out for anyone who doesn't play by the rules when it comes to building new houses that are too tall, too big, too Vegas.

Del Mar isn't old money--it's populated by scientists, professors from nearby University of California, San Diego, teachers (lots of teachers), airline industry workers (lots of pilots and flight attendants), gardeners, painters, retirees, accountants. You get the feeling that most people live here because they like the bleacher seats rather than the boxes--even if these houses on tiny lots have been rocked by the last 20 years' tsunami of beach-town inflation.

Del Mar never grew to an unmanageable size or broad-avenued ostentatiousness, because it couldn't. The mesa is only about 2 miles long, north to south, and less than 1/2 mile wide--to an invisible line where Crest Canyon acts as a boundary on the east. Today another boundary, Interstate 5, defines the town's eastern edge, but its river of traffic flows out of sight, out of mind once you're over the hill, gazing at the ocean.

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Along the western edge, the sea rolls toward shore across a series of broad shelves of hard-packed sand and an Eocene-epoch sandstone bed known as the Del Mar Formation, some of it bearded with sea grass that may tickle your toes if you swim in the beach area beneath the low cliffs. Outcrops of these green sandstone ledges are so encrusted with fossil oysters that they look like rubble from ancient middens.

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The beach is what first brought my wife and me here on our vacations from former California jobs and home cities. Now we are longtime residents who live about 500 yards up the hill from the surf. We still find ourselves drawn to this edge year-round, but especially in summer, when we can bodysurf the sparkling waves, take long walks in our suits (bathing, that is), and watch the sun attempt a green flash--a split-second crescent of emerald light that can be seen just at the moment el rey sol slips beneath the horizon.

The beach is the town's prize asset, particularly when summer traffic builds along Camino Del Mar. Longtime resident Pat Welsh, a nationally known garden writer and local civic beautification and arts activist, calls the beach and the open-space parks of Crest Canyon and Torrey Pines State Reserve Del Mar's "buffer zone."

"Our open land is what gives Del Mar its special feel," she says. "One of the things I so appreciate is the wild plants all around us. I know of bulbs as big as a man that lie in the ground. I'm actually reluctant to tell many people, other than plant aficionados, about extraordinary things like this because I sound like I'm making it up."

In both the main reserve and its extension--a hidden 168-acre enclave above Penasquitos Lagoon--the trails wind through a wondrous landscape. Wind- and drought-gnarled Torrey pines do a pas de deux with sandstone formations whose knife-edge ridges, deep furrows, and occasional hoodoo-like capstones create a mini Bryce Canyon at the beach.

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The Del Mar Racetrack's history may be more modest in terms of years, but not in the public's imagination. Here thoughts turn to the early days of the track's celebrity cofounder Bing Crosby and his Hollywood friends like Jimmy Durante, Ava Gardner, Betty Grable, Hoagy Carmichael, Red Skelton, Mickey Rooney, Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, and a hundred others. For years, when trains carrying race celebs from as far away as Los Angeles still stopped beside the track, fans already in their seats burst into applause--a tradition dating back to the track's first day when a late train finally arrived and Crosby's races could begin.

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The best celebrity joke, told in the official track history written by novelist, race fan, and Del Mar resident William Murray, was delivered by general manager Don Smith. He was about to pin a flower on Grable, even though the actress was wearing a strapless, form-fitting dress that had very little fabric real estate available.

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"I know those great legs of yours are insured," Smith said, "but I'm not sure about the rest of you." He handed her the flower and cracked, "You pin this on yourself."

As I move through the crowd between races, I don't spot a celebrity, but I do manage to easily view the pomp and circumstance of leggy horses strutting in the paddock beside wiry, 110-pound men and women jockeys.

A trumpet trills the classic call to the post. Back in my seat, a whopping $6 worth of bets in my hand, I lean forward for the fourth race. The horses break cleanly from the gate, but it appears Decisional will be rather indecisive on this day. Sanger explains that some horses are bothered by "the wall of sound they hit as they turn the corner into the homestretch in front of the grandstand. It's almost palpable."

Suddenly Sanger rises and begins slapping the railing with her program, shouting, "Well come on! We've got to see this horse run!"

We all stand for the finish: a blur of shining sable-brown or black beasts, brilliantly colored silks, and flying dirt. Frankly, it's thrilling.

"Woulda, coulda, shoulda," snorts Terwilliger as we all rip up our bets. "You hear those words all the time here."