Will -
The routing of EL is not Ross. Geo. Adair (with assistance from H H Barker) published in late 1912 (see Am Golfer) a proposed re-routing of the old Bendelow course. That routing, with some minor tweaks, is the current routing.
Adair was the now forgotten father of golf in the SE. He was, before his death in 1921, the most powerful figure in Atlanta golf. His son Perry grew up with Jones. he supported Alexa Stirling and was himself an excellent player. Interestingly, at his funeral O B Keeler lauded Adair for the "new" course he had built at EL.
Before the 1912 re-routing, there was unhappiness with the Bendelow course, primarily because the ninth hole did not return to the clubhouse. Adair brought in Travis and CBM to get their ideas. There is no record of any specific recommendations they made to Adair. (The EL clubhouse burned in the mid-1920's and most early records seem to have been lost. So who knows what might have been in old file cabinets.)
Adair notes (again, Am Golfer) that Ross was brought in to do a "sophisticated bunkering scheme" in 1913. Adair goes on to list those most responsible for EL as Ross, Barker, S. Maiden and finally himself. I think that ordering is pretty much the reverse of the truth given what we know about the original Adair routing from the previous year. My skepticism is heightened by the fact that there are no Ross plans for EL. There is no correspondence or notes at the Tufts archive relative to EL. (There are few Ross courses for which there is no record at Tufts.) I suspect that Adair was eager to have Ross' name attached to EL (rather than his own) for all the predictable reasons.
In short, Ross had a hand in the current course. But if principal design attribution is normally given to the person who routed the course, and that routing remains more or less intact, EL is better described as an Adair/Barker course with assistance from Ross, though the nature and extent of Ross' assistance remains unknown.
Ross did design a second course at EL in 1928 for which detailed drawings and notes exist. That course (arguably the better of the two) closed in 1976 or so. Perhaps Ross dabbled on the first EL course while building the second? If so there is no record of it. I would note that Ross later listed both EL courses as his designs. As Bob Jones home courses, there were plenty of incentives to be associated with EL, but as to the first (and current) EL course I think it was basically a fudge on Ross' part.
So I do not think EL can be called a Ross design or even mostly a Ross design. The evidence for what he did at EL is sparse at best. The evidence for what Adair and others did is ample.
Bob
P.S. The above assumes we are talking about EL pre-Rees. He made some changes circa 1996. Many of them I think were mistakes. His changes to the 10th hole in particular. But Rees did not change the basic routing of EL. Adair's routing is still basically intact.