Along with John Hunter, in 1863 he founded Saratoga Race Course and served as its first president Saratoga"s Travers Stakes is named in his honor and is the oldest major Thoroughbred horse race in the United States. In 1884, William Travers became one of the backers of the Sheepshead Bay Race Track on Coney Island.
They had nine children.
The operation had considerable success both in racing runners and with breeding at their Annieswood Study farm in Westchester County, New New York One of their most famous horses was Alarm, considered one of the best sprint race horses in American Thoroughbred horse racing history.
Travers was a long-time president of the New York Athletic Club. On January 13, 1887 the club purchased Hogg Island in Long Island Sound and Pelham, New York shoreline from the estate of John Hunter and renamed it Travers Island in his honor.
Travers died in Bermuda on March 19, 1887 from complications of diabetes.
In his obituary, The New York Times wrote that he was "probably the most popular man in New New York".
A well-known cosmopolite and high liver, Travers was a member of 27 private clubs, according to Cleveland Amory in his book Who Killed Society?.