DELAWARE, Ohio -- To get a grip on why Delaware has been the world's most famous harness-racing site for more than a half-century, and to understand why it will remain as such until the apocalypse, it's important to see the big picture of a sport that got its start in the Roman Empire.


Some historians peg the fall of that empire at 476 A.D., when Romulus Augustus was deposed as ruler. Horsemen also consider this a watershed date, because it marked the scrapping of chariots. How dark were the Middle Ages? There was no harness racing.

The sport would lay dormant another 1,400 years, or until American farmers took up the reins and raced their carts to market. There you have it: the county fair. Raise a jug, celebrate the harvest, and may the fastest horse win -- with bragging rights through the next winter, spring and summer.

Then came automobiles, televisions, corporate farms and prepared foods, vacuum-packed. Over time, county fairs became homogenized, like a fried Oreo, and big-time harness racing became specialized, like a simulcast from Yonkers.

To survive, harness racing went upmarket and began playing night games, like the Cleveland Indians, and it moved to places such as East Rutherford, N.J., like the New York football Giants.

There is one exception, one field of dreams in a cornfield. It is here, in Delaware, where they have a formula for freezing time. Today, it is frozen. Schools are not in session. The whole county is at the fair. Displaced Delawareans have flocked home. Harness-racing fans from across North America -- Canada, especially -- have made the pilgrimage. Trainers coast to coast have brought their best prospects.

More than 50,000 folks will roll in their coolers for the big party, the Little Brown Jug, a harness race contested on one of the last of the half-mile tracks. It's done in heats, the way the farmers used to do it -- the way almost nobody else does it anymore. It's at the fair.

It's a piece of Americana that endures, virtually unchanged. Why? Well, for one thing, the Jug is the ultimate prize for anyone who has ever put a cart in back of a horse. For another, Delaware is the Augusta National of harness tracks, but with a more open attendance policy.

"It's pretty much what you'd call a sacred piece of dirt," trainer Ron Potter said.

In 1937, a clutch of Delaware businessmen led by Joe Neville, a lawyer and horseman, and Hank Thomson, whose family owned and operated the Delaware Gazette, devised a plan to steal the county fair from Powell. They got the government to buy the land at the height of the Depression. Most important, they identified a niche -- a race for 3-year-old pacers -- and secured a date on the Grand Circuit racing calendar.

The name came out of a newspaper contest, won by Major Lanning Parsons of Mount Vernon, who suggested that "Little Brown Jug" was an homage to a great pacer from the 1880s and an easy trophy -- and it came with its own ditty, which Glenn Miller's orchestra had just covered.

The Jug was a hit from the start (the first race was in 1946), and one reason was the track, designed by Rollie McNamara. He was an older gent and not renowned for his apparent hobby, but he had one masterpiece in him, and it was plotted at the Delaware County Fairgrounds.

"He was decades ahead of his time," said Greg Coon, whose family has, for three generations, built and maintained racetracks. He is an expert in his specialized field. He is not the superintendent at Delaware -- Darrell Whitaker keeps the course in shape 51 weeks of the year -- but he has returned for Jug week every year since 1991 to groom the sacred dirt and serve as starter.

Coon said McNamara's genius lies in the banking, and in the wide turns, at Delaware.

"Huge turns and adequate banking makes horses go fast and stay sound," Coon said. "And these are the biggest turns in the business."

There are other elements that factor into the track's unique appeal. It still lies on a bed of clay (now covered with sand) instead of crushed gravel -- which is widely used, and weatherproof, and much tougher on horses. The loop is still a half-mile, instead of five-eighths or a full mile. And it's still fast. Last year, eight world records were set here, and they were witnessed with an unmatched intimacy.

"Tradition is what this place means," said Potter, the trainer.

The backstretch and the barns remain open to the public. Fans can mingle freely among horsemen and horses. Veteran Jug watchers chain their lawn chairs to the fence -- some keep them chained there for years -- to reserve their places on Jug Day. The grandstand remains old-school grand, even with four additions over the years. Races are held in the middle of the day. The weather during the third week after Labor Day is typically wonderful. (Today's forecast: Sunny and 87.)

Cross the threshold, and it's 1967. That was the year Roger Huston, the track announcer, called his first Jug. In 1983, Huston made sure that his wife delivered the couple's daughter, by Caesarian section, the week before the Jug. In 2001, Huston put off bypass surgery until after the Jug. In 2005, he put off his knee-replacement surgery. He is a legend, a Hall of Fame broadcaster from the Meadows racetrack outside Pittsburgh, and he will not miss the Jug. He chokes up when he talks about his favorite drivers, trainers and horses from over the years.

"John Hayes Sr., the great trainer, once said, 'I'd rather win the Little Brown Jug than go to heaven,' " Huston said.

Huston admits that's a little radical, but he can understand the sentiment.

"I was in London (England, not Madison County) and I was on a train, wearing a Jug cap," Tom Thomson said. "A guy walked up to me and said, 'That's the Little Brown Jug in Delaware, Ohio, isn't it?' "

Tom Thomson, 70, is Hank's kid. He has seen all 61 Jugs and will be on hand for No. 62 today. He still supervises the operation, in the role of director of racing, from the back room of the log cabin there on the backstretch. You can pop right in and say hello.

"What other race has a friggin' log cabin?" said Tom White, the longtime PR director.

"I was in college in the early '70s when my grandfather died, and he died a happy man because I was going to become a dentist," Coon said. "Twenty years later, I asked my father if Grandpa would have been ticked off because I wasn't a dentist.

"You know what my father said? He said, 'No, he'd have been swelled up with pride. It's the Jug.' This place meant something to him. It means something to everyone in the business."

The Little Brown Jug at the Delaware County Fairgrounds is a formula that will never again be re-created. There are thousands of harness races, many at other county fairgrounds, a few worth more money. But none are as big and small as the Jug. That's the secret. Hail the harvest, and may the best horse win. Bragging rights until next year.