Dexter: Original Sin Filming Locations: Hialeah racetrack
The
location: Hialeah Racetrack
Q.
What is it supposed to be on the show?
A. Hialeah racetrack
Q.
Where is it supposed to be on the show?
A. In real life, Hialeah is at 100 E 32nd St, in Hialeah, Florida.
Q.
When did we see it on the show?
A. We see the race course in Episode 5, of Season 1.
After Tanya mentions a racehorse being put down, Dexter asks her what
kind of drug could knock out an animal that big. She tells him it’s
probably M99.
This gives young Dexter the idea of injecting M99 to subdue his victims.
So he goes to Hialeah racetrack, sneaks into the barn, and after
releasing a horse to draw attention away from him, Dexter steals a
number of vials of M99 from a vet’s office.
But he
almost gets caught and has to hide in a stall, where he winds up
face-to-face with a large horse. it frightens him, but the horse turns
out to be friendly.
Q.
What is it actually in real life?
A. A racetrack, but not in Florida.
Q.
Where can I find it in real life?
A. This scene was filmed at the Santa Anita race course, at 285 W. Huntington Drive, in Arcadia, California.
The building we are seeing in this scene is actually the distinctive Santa Anita receiving barn.
Santa Anita is located about 15 miles northeast of downtown Los Angeles, and about 7 miles east of Pasadena.
For decades, there were two major thoroughbred race tracks in the Los
Angeles area: Santa Anita and Hollywood Park. Both had opened in the
1930s, and they took turns hosting thoroughbred meets throughout each
year.
Between its more convenient location and its bevy of movie stars,
Hollywood Park tended to get the most attention. But with horse racing as the only form of
legalized gambling in California, both racetracks prospered and drew
huge crowds for over half a century.
However, their fortunes changed for the worse in the mid-1980s, when other forms of
gambling were legalized.
The new Lotto offered much bigger jackpots than
horse racing possibly could, plus the convenience of not having to
travel to the track to place a bet. And gambling at Indian casinos,
which was also legalized in the 1980s, offered yet another alternative
to racing.
Not surprisingly, attendance at the racetracks suffered.
It turns out that while
there were plenty of people who loved horse racing, and continued to go
to the races, the majority of casual players went there only because
they could legally gamble. And once they had other options for gambling,
they abandoned racing for the easier ways to make a bet. Slowly but surely, racetrack attendance dwindled.
By 2013, given the more profitable option of using the land for a new
NFL football stadium, the owners of Hollywood Park closed the racetrack,
and demolished it’s buildings, leaving Santa Anita as the sole venue
for thoroughbred racing in the Los Angeles area. That greatly improved Santa Anita's chances of survival.
As of 2025, Santa Anita is alive and well; it hosts a number of major thoroughbred stakes races each year, including
the Santa Anita Derby, and has often hosted the prestigious Breeders
Cup. It even holds guided tours of the grounds on most weekends.
The track has also been the filming location of not one but two different Hollywood movies about the thoroughbred champion “Seabiscuit”.
As for the actual Hialeah race track, in Florida, alas, it went
the way
of many thoroughbred race tracks, such as Hollywood Park. While most of
its historic structures still stand, thoroughbred racing hasn’t been held at
Hialeah since 2001, and the property is now little more than a casino.
Q. How the heck did you figure out where it was?
A. I have been to
both Santa Anita and Hollywood Park, so that familiar green & yellow color
scheme of Santa Anita was immediately recognizable.
Fortunately, their
receiving barn is unique and round, so it's easy to identify. To
double-check, all I had to do was Google for images of the “Santa Anita
receiving
barn”, and Google quickly popped up this matching image:
