That attitude certainly makes her the right woman for the job she holds each Preakness-time. Burns runs the “Sunrise at Old Hilltop” tours that take place each morning on the Tuesday through Friday prior to the Preakness. This year’s tours run from 6:00 to 9:00 a.m.

If the weather cooperates, some 2,000 people may participate in the tours. And that’s not including hundreds of schoolchildren that come over from the nearby Arlington Elementary/Middle School for tours. That latter group is one way in which Pimlico – often an island unto itself in the middle of the Park Heights neighborhood – is knit into the surrounding community.

“We have 500 students that walk over from their school, which is about four or five blocks, and we do a special tour for them,” Burns explains, ticking off what the kids will see: a chance to learn about the parts of the horse from former trainer Tim Tullock, a demonstration of riding skills from former jockey Frank Douglas, a Baltimore City mounted police horse, a blacksmith. The tapestry of racing in miniature.

“The kids get snacks. They get to color a horse head, and we turn that into a stick pony. So everybody takes a stick pony home,” Burns continues. “And then at the very end, we’re going to give them a bag that has the [Thoroughbred Aftercare Alliance] coloring book and a box of crayons. I got the Maryland soybean group and got Mount Washington Tavern to sponsor the printing of the coloring books.”

And perhaps some of the kids will go on to engage with racing more down the road.

“The principal told me it’s their very favorite field trip,” Burns says. “And from the standpoint of the tour guides, they’re our favorite group. I would love it if one of them showed up one day with a horse in the Preakness.”

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Burns says she and the other 10 or 12 tour guides strive to make the tours as interactive – and as welcoming to a wide range of people – as possible. 

“I wanted to try and engage people a little bit more, and make them feel as though they were a part of something really special,” she says. “So that’s when we started having special stops, interactive stops.”

The blacksmith might be shoeing a horse, for example. The rider won’t just talk about riding, he’ll hop on the Equicizer and demonstrate proper technique.

“All my tour guides come from some type of horse background,” Burns adds.

Yomar Ortiz, Jr. is the 14-year-old son of jockey Yomar Ortiz, Sr. and an aspiring jockey in his own right. “My dream is to become a jockey like my dad,” he says.

Jenile Tapscott is an assistant to her mother, longtime local trainer Carlyne Tapscott. April Smith spearheads the “Friends of Pimlico” group that aims to preserve Old HIlltop.

And the list goes on: Erika Taylor Crowl, Donna Sullivan, Julia Oughton, Sally Eck, Katherine Powder, Erica Gaertner, Wendy Chapin Albert, Justine Howell, Anna Epperly, Posey Obrecht.

All tour guides. All horse folks. All recruited by Burns.

Burns, too, comes from a horse background. She grew up on the family farm in nearby Cockeysville showing horses – Thoroughbreds, generally – but she did not grow up attending the races. Instead, her love of PImlico is something of a bank shot.

Retired from what she calls her “real job” in broadcasting and sales, Burns was drawn to Pimlico and the tours from tales her mother told her when she was a young girl.

“My mother used to come to the [old] clubhouse as a child,” Burns remembers. “She was here for the Seabiscuit race [the Pimlico Special match race against War Admrial]. She rooted against Seabiscuit because my great-grandfather was friends with [War Admiral’s owner] Mr. Riddle.”

A disappointing race, certainly – Seabiscuit won – but nothing else about Pimlico or its ornate old clubhouse was disappointing to the child version of Burns’s mother. 

“She could describe it to ‘t’,” Burns recalls. “She used to tell me about going to the clubhouse and how dressed up she would get. She would talk about the volumes of books in the library, and the leather seats.”

Baltimore Sun reporter Jacques Kelly, a child during the old clubhouse’s heyday, called it a “curious, whimsical building.” Still, he was doubtful that it could live up to the hype his parents and other adults bestowed upon it.

“But when you finally experienced it, you saw they weren’t exaggerating. It was actually better than they said,” he remembered.

The clubhouse burned down in a massive 1966 fire, 96 years after its construction. The Sun trumpeted the blaze as its lead headline on Page 1. “Historic Clubhouse Burns At Pimlico,” the headline blared.

It made a big impact in Burns’s young life, too.

“I remember when the fire happened,” she says. “I was little – it was in 1966 and I was born in ‘58. I remember my mother crying at the kitchen table, saying, ‘It’s gone. It’s completely gone.’”

Nothing in life remains the same, of course, and in recent years, Pimlico has been a much-diminished presence on the Maryland racing scene: fewer horses stabled here, and fewer racing days. And much more discussion of its future, whatever that may be.

But for a few days, a few precious spring days each year, Pimlico returns to the center of American racing, as it once was, and a place that calls to racing pilgrims.

Burns ticks them off: a girl celebrating her 11th birthday, people from the Department of Defense, students from the Roland Park Country School, an economic development group.

“Most people have never been here. They’ve never been up close to a horse,” Burns says of those planning to take the tour. “They’ve never seen Pimlico, and now’s the time to come and see Pimlico.

“I have people that walk in here that live six blocks away and say they’ve never been here. And then I have people that drive from New Jersey every single year,” she continues. “We see some people every year, because you never know what you’re going to see when we take them down to the stakes barn area.”

Fran Burns looked around. An afternoon sun splashed the old facility, a wind gentled itself into your consciousness. Tractors made their rounds, harrowing the racetrack. Workers sought to coax and massage Pimlico, Maryland racing’s ancestral home, into condition to host another running of the Middle Jewel, the 148th edition of the race named for the winner of the inaugural DInner Party Stakes.

“Can you imagine if this place could talk?” she asks. “I love sitting out here, especially when it’s quiet like this. There’s something really majestic about it.”

Sunrise at Old Hilltop Tours run Tuesday, May 16, through Friday, May 19, and are free of charge and open to the public. For more information, visit: Sunrise Tours | Preakness Stakes