Tom,
There could be a million reasons, most of them likely financial.
You previously pointed out one of them...his sale of the Colonnade Hotel, which was prolonged over a period of three years, from 1907 until near the end of 1910. We know it was sold for about $1,000,000.
We now know that Crump was trying to sell the hotel from sometime in 1907, likely after the death of his wife.
We also know that much of his 1910 was dedicated to business, which likely was the final sale of the hotel, as well as likely other matters.
We also know that right after the hotel was sold in later 1910, that he went abroad to play the great courses of Europe for three months.
We also know that while there he wrote his brother-in-law requesting a recent map of Camden County. We don't know if it was a topo map or not.
As far as looking at other prospective sites in Absecon and Browns Mills, we don't know when that was. Baker doesn't tell us, but it is not inconceivable that it was prior to 1910, or in that same year. We know the group was looking at alternatives where they could get to sandy based soils to build their own private club that could be open most of the year....Atlantic City was a public course, but we know they looked at potential sites near the shore since that originally seemed a logic choice. Baker tells us that Crump dumped the Absecon site because of mosquitoes, so it's likely he viewed it in summer, but we don't know what year.
We don't know when he looked at Browns Mills either, but it's about 26 miles due east of Crump's home in Merchantville (Absecon was southeast) going towards the shore towards Tom's River, NJ, about 30 miles from the ocean.
Tillinghast in his very first article in January 1913 seeks to explain why they chose the land of Pine Valley over land closer to the shore. Simply, after looking at potential sites, this one was clearly the best, although being further inland, it does not shed snow as quickly as closer to the shore.
We also know about the sale of the hotel, but if Crump was doing a midlife change of this magnitude, it's likely he had other matters, financial and otherwise, to get in order before pursuing a large land purchase and building his own golf course..
What do we know about the sale of the land? Was it for sale when Crump first looked? If so, at what price? What do we know about the seller? Supposedly it was Sumner Ireland, but the sale was actually from the Lumberton Sand Company.
Were they actively mining it at the time? Using it for other purposes? We don't know much about the sale, or what factors could have caused that delay, do we?
We know that Tillinghast told us that Crump looked at the land for some time, motoring out there by himself at first several times, then bringing some close friends to get their take...perhaps he hunted it at that time as well...but we know he took a long time studying it before the actual purchase.
To suggest that all of this just started in 1912 and was completed that year seems very much at odds with what we know...and what we don't know.
Here again is the first part of that article...
