Who was the first to tackle a heavily treed site in America?

[TEPaul]

I'm wondering who it was in America that first tackled a heavily treed site to build a golf course. Back then doing such a thing was a considerable amount of work that may've seemed unnecessary and an unnecessary expense at the time.

The best of the early American courses such as Chicago G.C., GCGC, Myopia, NGLA, Oakmont, Merion that all happened before 1913 were all on open land pre-construction.

Was George Crump and Pine Valley the first good course in America to tackle a heavily treed site?

[Jonathan Cummings]

Piping Rock (wild guess...)

[Kyle Harris]

Tillinghast wrote of blasting through stumps and trees at a site in North Jersey or New England I believe. For the life of me I can't think of the name of the course, but it starts with an "A."

What about Pinehurst?

[TEPaul]

Kyle:

That's Alpine and it was way later. Pinehurst is a good choice even if the early course looks like it was on land that was previously cleared and open.

[Doug Ralston]

Middlesboro CC is a pretty good guess to your question, since it is in a very forested area. Take a look.

http://www.middlesborocountryclub.net/

Doug

[michael j fay]

I ha a set of post cards of the Pine Valley course from the 50's. There were no where near as many trees on the property at that time.

I assume that Crump was forced to clear scrubland.

Most of the early Ross courses were built on previously cleared land (mostly old farm land). Early aerial show one site after another that was virtually without trees. He did build Jefferson Lakeside in Richmond in an arboretum.

Clearing full sized trees in the teens and twenties was expensive and time consuming. At that time there were fallow farms fairly close to the larger cities.

[Mike_Sweeney]

The best of the early American courses such as Chicago G.C., GCGC, Myopia, NGLA, Oakmont, Merion that all happened before 1913 were all on open land pre-construction.

"It (NGLA's land) abounded in bogs and swamps and was covered with an entanglement of bayberry, huckleberry, blackberry and other bushes ...... The only way one could get over the ground was on ponies." CB Macdonald.

Maybe it was not oaks or pine trees, but I disagree with the premise that NGLA was on "open Land".

[TEPaul]

"Maybe it was not oaks or pine trees, but I disagree with the premise that NGLA was on "open Land"."

Mike:

That's an excellent point and one I was thinking of before posting this thread. Even if some of those courses were not previously heavily treed in some cases the ground was still somewhat hidden by something and in that fact may lie a very interesting point or turning point in the evolution of golf course architecture in both GB and America.

Sunningdale and Huntercombe, perhaps the world's first really good inland courses (but what about Myopia at the same time?) were on land covered by heather and gorse and such and certainly far from visible and then there was NGLA that as you said was covered by bayberry bushes and other dense vegetation.

The point is----were they actually looking for something at those sites overgrown with ground cover or heavily treed(Sunningdale and NGLA and PVGC)?

I think they were but what was it?

I think it was probably the first time they consciously looked for some really good percolation.

If we understand better what some of those first inland golf courses' ground conditions were like we will understand why. Apparently they were either rock hard or too soft and growing decent turf for golf on them was a total pain in the ass because of that with few apparent agronomic or even construction solutions at the time.

[TEPaul]

Mike:

But the real irony is both Macdonald at NGLA and Crump at PVGC found sites they may've searched for to find better "through the profile drainage" and the fact was those sites were at the complete opposite end of the spectrum from the inland farmland sites with heavy and compacted soil.

The likes of early NGLA, PVGC that were on basically straight sand drained way too well and they couldn't grow grass on that either without huge efforts in time and money to amend the profile.

[Peter Pallotta]

TE:

a novice's question: what even EARLIER courses gave rise to this first conscious effort to find land with good percolation?

I guess what I'm asking is: what were the FAILURES that Macdonald would've known about that helped him realize what was really necessary?

Peter

[Mike_Sweeney]

Tom,

http://www.hamptonbaysonline.com/history.php

Evidence of this absence of trees is noted in the writing of the times. Bayles in his Sketches of Suffolk County describes Canoe Place:

"low, sandy hills, overlooking bays north and south, and affording an unobstructed view of the bleak waste of Shinnecock Hills on the east."19
He goes on further to describe Shinnecock Hills:

"Here and there a patch of some low growing shrub…are the only representatives of vegetation that dare venture an existence upon these hills…There are no trees here. Scarcely an apology for one is seen in the whole region. Nor do we see any evidence to support the conclusion that it was ever wooded, though it is possible that some parts of it were once…"20
These hills were such a desolate wasteland in early times that travelers thought twice about crossing them alone. Bayles tells of a popular tale of the 1870's concerning earlier times:

"a traveler who challenged all the spirits to cross the hills on a stormy night…some found lying dead without a sign of violence except his tongue was pulled out and hung on a nearby bush".

The absence of very large trees in the area as well as most of Long Island is the result of fires and lumbering. The present forests are a result of growth mostly in the last 100 years, since the lumbering stopped.

[TEPaul]

"TE:
a novice's question: what even EARLIER courses gave rise to this first conscious effort to find land with good percolation?"

Peter:

I'm not too sure and that's what I'm trying to explore because it may show one of the primary reasons for a turning point in golf course architecture, even if it happened by accident but I'm beginning to feel it may not have.

It seems from reports of that time early time (the latter half of the 19th century) that the first attempts to build golf courses INLAND in particularly England created a situation that was just completely unideal for both decent golf and decent turf for a bunch of reason. Certainly unideal turf-wise compared to the Scottish linksland.

The land on those early inland English and American sites generally wasn't very interesting compared to the linksland but almost always the soil structure and makeup and drainage was completely unideal. This is obviously something they hadn't even thought of when they first began to build those early rudimentary inland courses both in GB and in America.

So the question is, was a guy like Willie Park Jr who created what seems to be the world's first good inland golf course architecture in the heathlands around the turn of the century actually looking for something about the ground and the soil that was more ideal for golf and golf agronomy or did he just come upon it by accident?

And what about Macdonald and Crump?

If Park Jr just came upon it by accident he sure went to a lot of trouble to strip heather, rhododendrons and such off the ground to look at the soil at Sunningdale. The same probably with Macdonald at NGLA. At Pine Valley Crump went to huge effort to expose parts of the land---eg he took down up to 50,000 trees albeit pretty small ones.

I think Park must have been actively and consciously looking in inland England and the fact that he found for the first time inland soil and drainage in the heathlands very similar to the soil and drainage of the linksland changed golf architecture forever.

[Peter Pallotta]

Thanks, TE.

Just intuitively, it DOES seem hard to believe that men like Crump and Macdonald would've gone to the trouble and expense of such clearings if they DIDN'T somehow believe it was worth it, i.e. that the right soil properties were essential.

Another novice question: did Park and Macdonald know eachother? Were they at least part of the same informal "network of connections" that might've been exploring this issue behind the scenes?

Peter

[JMorgan]

Tom Paul, I'd put my money on Tom Bendelow.

[TEPaul]

"Just intuitively, it DOES seem hard to believe that men like Crump and Macdonald would've gone to the trouble and expense of such clearings if they DIDN'T somehow believe it was worth it, i.e. that the right soil properties were essential."

Peter:

Actually both Macdonald at NGLA and Crump at Pine Valley apparently had zero idea about the importance of what you refer to as "soil properties" and that would end up causing them tremendous problems and for some years.

It appears what they may've been looking for, among other things, was simply land that really drained well (perked well). They may not have even had percolation analysis back then----they may've just deduced that a primarily sand based site drained better.

The irony was that both NLGA and PVGC naturally drained WAY too well and that caused them hugh agronomic problems.

What they did not understand at all at that time was the necessity of actual soil (as opposed to sand) for the purposes of both plant nutrition as well as a medium to better retain moisture for the endurance of agronomy. Don't forget back then irrigating agronomy (artificially) was definitely in its infancy in golf both in GB, the linksland, heathlands and in America.

They pretty much had to depend on Nature in all ways and obviously there were a lot of basic things they did not understand about it when it came to golf agronomy which anyone must realize was basically hybrid and would become increasingly so.

This was nothing much like growing crops, that's for sure, which most everyone did understand back then.

Actually for a time a few of those early guys made the mistake of assuming golf agronomy was sort of like growing crops and that created a whole different set of problems.

This was a whole new ball game no one understood much about.

The question is why was it that the linksland turf worked so well and for so long?

Linksland agronomy in and of itself is just an incredible story.

[David Stamm]

Wouldn't St Andrews in Yonkers, NY be the first? It supposedly was famous for how many apple tree's were on it, hence, the Apple Tree gang. If I remember right, a gentleman went to play NGLA and he had only played one round ever and that was at Yonkers. When asked about what he thought of NGLA, he said that it wasn't a golf course because he didn't have apple tree's on it!

[Mike Policano]

Tom,

Is St. Andrew's in Yonkers NY a candidate for earliest clearing of a heavily treed course?

[TEPaul]

Mike and David:

I would very much doubt that the apple tree gang that first started playing golf in what became known as St Andrews in Yonkers, N.Y. gave the slightest thought to removing a tree.  

And I bet they never gave even a passing thought to drainage or soil structure for improved golf agronomy either.

[ANTHONYPIOPPI]

I nominate the most neglected early architect on this site: Walter Travis. Construction for Ekwanok started in 1900. The site may have been, at least partially, farmland.

Anthony

[JMorgan]

Rosedale Golf Club, 1893
Toronto, ONT
Tom Bendelow

I don't know if I'd count an apple orchard as a heavily wooded site.     It would have been cleared before the trees were planted.

[TEPaul]

Maybe I didn't phrase this thread correctly. I was thinking about the first site in America that was heavily wooded where a ton of trees necessarily needed to be removed from the site before the golf course could be built.

[ANTHONYPIOPPI]

TE:

This is going to turn out to be a much more difficult question than I (maybe you) imagined. In the late 19th century and into the early 20th, much of the United States had been logged for firewood and other uses.

In New England you can drive through any back road and see stonewalls peaking out from what looks to be forest, but not that long ago had to have been farmland.

Another example is the Redwoods at Northwood Golf Club that average about 150 feet tall. They are referred to as "new growth" because that entire area had been logged in the 1800s.

I'll bet the Ekwanok site had been harvested as well.

Anthony

[JMorgan]

Tom Paul, which America, North or South?

(Rosedale was a heavily wooded site if you're considering North America.)  

[Mike_Sweeney]

Tom,

I am sure it was not the first, but Yale may be the first that was/is well documented. See the slide presentation:

http://research.yale.edu/wwkelly/Yale-golf/galleries/construction-gallery/Webpages/gallery-01.html

[TEPaul]

Mike:

Thanks for that but no, Yale was a lot later. By that time they were into all kinds of new and modern techniques like massive steam winches, cool applications of dynamite etc.

That Tillinghast was one helluva creative mind in architecture but I think he had a secret sneaker for blowing shit up first----trees, rocks, massive amounts of earth etc.

Macdonald may've been the same frankly. I think Macdonald wanted to be the guy who could prove he spent the most too. Look at how he bragged about some of the price-tags on some of the courses he did---eg Lido and Yale.