TMac,
I am just quoting from the Tillie article that says he saw it from a train in 1910, and then motored out to see the site.
What part of that do you think is wrong? Tillie was writing for a newspaper, which presumably had some ethical standards against making stuff up, as you seem to think he was doing now. Tillie was not writing fiction for the newspaper to the best of my knowledge. So, is this yet another guy that you are accusing of being a poster child for unethical behavior?
Do you know of some motivation for Tillie to write that thing if he wasn't told that directly by Crump? Unless you can provide some sort of evidence of misdoing, other than your "common sense" which can't quite seem to grasp the idea that a man looking to build his ideal course just might be scouting different sites over three years, assessing the merits of all of them, I will side with Tillie. And, we know from some of your other "logical" interpretations that you really have little common sense in this kind of matter.