And every January the world arrives. For roughly twelve to thirteen weeks each winter, Wellington becomes the center of international horse sport — show jumping, hunter/jumper, and dressage in the show rings, and Sunday polo on the club fields — with riders from all fifty states and more than thirty countries, and some twenty thousand horses stabled across the village's seven hundred-plus farms. The Winter Equestrian Festival anchors the season, and an entire winter economy of grooms, trainers, vets, and farriers moves in with it. The strawberry fields are long gone, but the harvest never left; it just changed shape.
Polo arrived in 1977, and the winter show season now runs roughly twelve to thirteen weeks each January through April, drawing riders from all 50 states and more than 30 countries.
Why People Visit Wellington Florida
Wellington is the Winter Equestrian Capital of the World and one of South Florida's most distinctive towns: a place built on the reclaimed swampland of a Harvard aviator's Flying Cow Ranch, the one-time world's largest strawberry patch, now home to tens of thousands of horses every winter. It blends horse-country culture with Everglades-edge wildlife preserves and wetland parks — show jumping, dressage, and polo on one side, boardwalks and birdwatching towers on the other. From the C.O.W. ranch and the strawberry fields to the bridle trails and the polo grounds, history and everyday culture sit side by side. Strawberry patch to horse country. The winter capital of the riding world.
