The Shops at Tanforan is a mid-sized regional mall whose interest is almost entirely historical. The site was Tanforan Racetrack from 1899 to 1964, a major thoroughbred venue where Seabiscuit, the small underdog horse that became a national symbol during the Depression, raced and trained. Photographs from the racing era hang in the mall corridors.
The same grandstands were converted in 1942 into the Tanforan Assembly Center, where some 8,000 people of Japanese descent — most of them American citizens — were held in former horse stalls before being shipped to internment camps in Utah and Wyoming. A memorial outside the BART station entrance, dedicated in 2022, commemorates the internees and includes statues of the Mochida children, photographed by Dorothea Lange wearing their identification tags as they waited for transport. The horse-track itself burned down in 1964; the mall opened in 1971.