Eagle Point Farm to be featured in new book
Book a 14-year labor of love for owner Donna Dennehy
Press Release
May 5, 2026
Eagle Point Farm in Ashland is an iconic equine property in Central Virginia that has been in Donna Dennehy’s family for 79 years. Her father, Ed Gilman, purchased the property in 1947 and while Donna represents the second generation to operate the 200-acre farm and training center, her daughter Karen — the third generation — now trains and oversees most aspects of the business.
Racing enthusiasts will soon get a chance to learn more about Eagle Point’s history via a 200-page hardcopy book titled “Donna Dennehy, Eagle Point Farm, Legacy of Grit and Grace” that will be released May 9 at a fundraising event for the Ashland Museum. Writing and preparing the book for publishing has been a 14-year project.
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“It’s been on my to-do list for a long time,” said Dennehy. “I’d start it, put it aside and get busy with other things in my life then go back to it. It’s a conglomeration of stories from over the years. I got a little emotional looking back and thinking about my parents and events that occurred here, but we’re getting it done.”
“The project actually started 18 years ago when my grandson lived with me. At night he’d want to hear a story about the farm and often times he’d say you ought to write a book. Then I’d have people come out to the farm and I’d tell them a story and they would say the same thing — that you should write a book. Our life here has been interesting for sure but I don’t think I’ll be rich and famous from the book.”
Dennehy’s parents bought the farm initially and the first chapter fittingly, is about them.
“They adopted me in 1949 when I was six months old,” she said. “I was never that horse crazy girl that wanted a pony, but I always had something to ride. I showed, fox hunted and even had a donkey to ride when I was a year old. As a child I rode every day of my life. I went to college with plans to be a math major and a teacher. That changed though. I ended up coming home to run the farm.”
Dennehy still has a very active role with Eagle Point’s operations and she assists Karen daily.
“Right now, I’m exhausted from completing this project and also helping out at the farm,” she said. “When I get the book in my hand, it will be very gratifying. I’m also going to be relieved. It’s something I wanted to do. There’s a lot of pride here. My husband Steve ran Eagle Point after my father, then I went back to running it, and now it’s Karen. It’s been a roller coaster ride whether we were going to make or if we weren’t going to make it. This is our livelihood. Karen has done a marvelous job. She does it different than me, my husband or my father had, but she is an excellent horsewoman, good with owners and good with horses. It’s kind of unbelievable what we’ve done here.”
Dennehy credits the Virginia Thoroughbred Association’s Certified Residency program with providing local farms an opportunity to get a needed boost, including theirs.
“Our farm stays full now,” she said. “We are able to be more selective in horses that stay here, we’ve been able to raise our rates, and have been able offer better pay to our employees. I just had $9,000 in hay delivered and I’ve got money in my checking account to pay for it. That financial pressure has been relieved. We just finished re-building 4-1/2 miles of fencing on the property. We’re don’t have to patch things up anymore. We replace things now. You can go anywhere on this farm and climb over a fence and not worry about it breaking.”
Dennehy says Eagle Point is in as good a shape now as it has been at any other point in its history. “We’re probably at the top,” she said.
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