By LUIS VACA-SOTO
Courtesy of Tracy Scagliarini
I joined the staff of the Laurel Historical Society (LHS) in March 2024, and soon met Tracy Scagliarini, a longtime LHS volunteer — and notably, winner of the society’s Volunteer of the Year award in 2023. As we got to know each other, she shared stories about Laurel to help me get better acquainted with the area and its history.
One of Scagliarini’s stories was about Mountain Rose II, a horse who was euthanized after breaking a leg during a race at Laurel Park on October 24, 1924. His owner, Ben “Chappie” Chapman, buried Mountain Rose II near the track’s stable. He hoped the horse would be honored and revered for eternity.
Chapman’s daughter, Virginia “Ginny” (Chapman) Scagliarini, Tracy Scagliarini’s mother-in-law, is the last surviving member of the family who would remember the days where Mountain Rose II raced to tremendous success throughout his career. Indeed, In April 1923, the Baltimore Sun proclaimed that Mountain Rose II kicked off a strong spring season, having won at least four races in a row. He was certainly no stranger to the winner’s circle!
Like her father before her (and much of her family since), Ginny Scagliarini, now 102, was familiar with the horses at Laurel Park, where she worked in the security department from 1960 to 2004. She sometimes wandered to Mountain Rose II’s gravesite, and noted over time that the site became overgrown with the very rose bushes that were planted at the horse’s grave decades earlier. It became difficult, if not impossible, to reach the gravesite, and family members rarely visited.
And then a fortunate, chance meeting at LHS kickstarted a process that turned all of that around.
One spring day, Christa Wilson, who’s guest relations coordinator at Laurel Park, came to the LHS museum to do some research. As I pulled materials from our collections for Wilson, she told me about some early history of the track. I immediately remembered Tracy Scagliarini’s captivating story of Mountain Rose II’s gravesite — a story Wilson had not heard before. She made it her mission to not only find the gravesite, but to restore it to a state that would honor the horse.
Courtesy of Tracy Scagliarini
With the help of the track’s facilities director, Dave Burke, Wilson and a host of others at Laurel Park took on the challenge; clearing out a dense thicket that had blocked access and preserving some of the rose bushes that were planted so long ago. Along with the unveiling of Mountain Rose II’s restored gravesite, Laurel Park named the fifth race on Aug. 16 after the horse, and the Scagliarini family was honored in the winner’s circle, along with the victorious jockey and his horse.
Courtesy of Tracy Scagliarini
For more information on Mountain Rose II, please go to our blog at laurelhistoricalsociety.org. If you would like to access our collections for your own research projects, please contact us at info@laurelhistoricalsociety.org
Luis Vaca-Soto is the museum administrator at the Laurel Historical Society.
