On a recent morning, two women rode their horses across Aiken's Winthrop Polo Field while Joanie Schisler, of Orangeburg Street, walked her dogs.

"This is sort of a neighborhood open space," said Dacre Stoker, the Aiken County Open Land Trust executive director. "I think it's wonderful to see people walking their dogs or riding their horses. ... Almost everybody gets to use it."

The Aiken Polo Club also practices on the nonregulation-size field, and bicycle polo players often take over the tract on week nights.

The 12-acre field, which is sandwiched between Grace and Mead avenues along Sumter Street, could have been a thing of the past, however. In the mid-1970s, the property was slated for development.

Two decades later, the Open Land Trust preserved the grounds in perpetuity.

The nonprofit took out a loan to purchase the property in 1992, Mr. Stoker said, and members of the equestrian community raised $400,000 to repay the debt five years later.

"It could have been really sad to have it turn into 12 houses," Mr. Stoker said. "The zoning has since changed."

The grassy field, located in the heart of the city's horse district, has been the site of equestrian activities dating back to at least the 1920s.

At that time, W. Averell Harriman, who later became governor of New York, owned the field, said Ivor Stoddard, a one-time member of the Aiken Polo Club.

F. Ambrose Clark later bought the field to train steeplechase horses, he said.

"In the late '60s, it was purchased by Mr. Walter Shapter," Mr. Stoddard said. "He brought it back as a polo field."

Mr. Shapter, however, wanted to develop the property after he retired from polo, Mr. Stoddard said.

Adam Winthrop, who lived in Hamilton, Mass., bought the land in the 1970s to save it from development, he said.

Mr. Stoddard, who lived in the neighborhood from 1948 until 1962, was pleased the field had been preserved.

"Pieces of property like that are very hard to preserve inside the city limits and sometimes outside the city limits," he said. "It's the only large equestrian piece of property for all disciplines available in the city."

Thoroughbreds cannot train on the field, and sets of polo ponies cannot use it for exercise. Participants in other disciplines, including carriage drivers, train on the field.

Mr. Stoker said Aiken is indebted to its first polo families, such as the Hitchcocks and the Whitneys.

"It's now time for us, our generation, to step up and continue with the dream the guys left for us," he said. "Those guys sacrificed to create it. We need to do the same to keep it going."

Reach Betsy Gilliland at (803) 648-1395 or betsy.gilliland@augustachronicle.com.