[Greg Hohman]

That’s a line from a PBS documentary “Blue Sky Metropolis” about the history of aviation in SoCal. According to BSM, an early idea was for individuals to commute in their own planes. A scene from Metropolis (1927) is shown to illustrate the point. When the idea proved unfeasible on a large enough scale, some runways were repurposed into golf courses. Which SoCal courses used to be runways? Were runways elsewhere "golf-coursed"?


(A little due diligence with the DG search function did not generate answers.)

[mike_beene]

Sewickly in Pittsburgh was an airport.

[Greg Hohman]

Mike, I'm gob-smacked. Of all places! Long ago I was a writer at the Sewickley Herald and have a perverse obsession with the place. Which Sewickley-area course?

[mike_beene]

Sewickley Heights Golf Club. If you google you can see where the long runway was.

[Kyle Harris]

Butter Valley Golf Port IS an airport.

[Tim_Cronin]

The reverse is also true. Twin Orchard northwest of Chicago was taken over by the Orchard Field airport next door. You know it today at O'Hare International. If I recall correctly, the golf course was about where Terminal 3 is. (O'Hare's main expansion was to the south.)

[Tom_Doak]

Butter Valley Golf Port IS an airport.

There is a major airport somewhere in Asia that has fairways right in between the runways.  I LOL'd when Paul Jansen showed me a photo of it.


Also, I know that the current Pittsburgh airport in on the site of the old Montour Heights GC, because the Dyes had a blank check to build the club a replacement course.

[Edward Glidewell]

The reverse is also true. Twin Orchard northwest of Chicago was taken over by the Orchard Field airport next door. You know it today at O'Hare International. If I recall correctly, the golf course was about where Terminal 3 is. (O'Hare's main expansion was to the south.)

There were two cheap public courses in Greensboro, NC that shut down to expansion of PTI airport.

[Ken Moum]

Out here in fly-over country there are more than a few courses, often with sand greens, what are on or around a grass-strip airport. Since these airports are pretty low-traffic, I have always assumed that they put courses there because the airports had gang mowers to keep the runways cut.


FWIW, my first round of golf was nine holes on sand greens in Rolla, ND, and it was at the local airport. It was more than 60 years ago and I didn't break 100.


My dad always said it was the longest golf course he ever played for it's card yardage. His brother a civil engineer said that was because he measured it with a surveyor's chain and it was accurately measured.

[Jim O’Kane]

The reverse is also true. Twin Orchard northwest of Chicago was taken over by the Orchard Field airport next door. You know it today at O'Hare International. If I recall correctly, the golf course was about where Terminal 3 is. (O'Hare's main expansion was to the south.)

Wasn't The Glen Club built on the land that where the Glenview Naval Air Station once stood? In Glenview, IL?

[Tim_Cronin]

The reverse is also true. Twin Orchard northwest of Chicago was taken over by the Orchard Field airport next door. You know it today at O'Hare International. If I recall correctly, the golf course was about where Terminal 3 is. (O'Hare's main expansion was to the south.)

Wasn't The Glen Club built on the land that where the Glenview Naval Air Station once stood? In Glenview, IL?

Next to the airfield itself, on land where the 36-hole Pickwick-Suburban courses stood and were eventually taken over by the Navy when they took over the airport at the start of World War II. The Navy eventually closed one to expand the facility.

[Tim Leahy]

I know two military courses in SoCal that were built on former runways I believe, March AFB General Old and the Navy Course in Cypress which Tiger learned to play on.

[Sven Nilsen]

Flying clubs were a real thing in the 1920's, with golf sometimes being incorporated as a feature.


Here are a number of examples -



Wauhilla Aviation & GC, Olema, CA
Yolo Fliers Club in Woodland, CA
Lansing Airport GC, Lansing, IL
Bradley Hills CC in Bethesda, MD was once known as Washington Aviation CC
Aviation CC (aka Lochhaven) in Pontiac, MI
Twin City Golf & Aviation Club (aka Michicago CC) in Benton Harbor, MI
Aviation GC in Bendix, NJ


There were plans for a public course to be known as Airport GC in Akron, OH.  Not sure if it was ever built.


The Woodward Airport in Woodward, OK was turned into Twin Lakes GC in the early 1930's.


When Clewiston GC in Florida was being built by Stiles & Van Kleek, the land for the proposed second 9 holes was used as an airport.


Langford's West Palm Beach GC was taken over for the expansion of the airport there in 1942.


There were a number of courses built on Air Force or Naval Air properties for use of the officers including reports of Donald Ross building a pitch and putt course at Maxton Air Base, but that is a different story.  The connection between the military and golf is probably deserving of its own thread.


Sven

[David_Tepper]

Don't forget the fairways on a number of British courses were turned into Royal Air Force runways during WWII. I know that happened at Turnberry and Royal Dornoch. I think it also happened at Prince's and maybe Royal Cinque Ports.

[David Kelly]

Whitefish Lake Golf Club in Montana  The club has 36 holes and the original course (North) was built as a golf course and landing strip as part of a WPA project in the 1930s.  I think it was quickly determined that it wasn't going to work as a working airfield so it was deemed an emergency arifield by the 1940s.

[Pete_Pittock]

googled grass runway turned into golf course in Hawaii and voila
https://home.army.mil/hawaii/index.php/news/articles/nagorski-golf-course-reopen-fort-shafter


in the retrograde, Alderwood, a Vernon Macan golf course which hosted the 1937 US Amateur was swallowed up by Portland International Airport per this article with map.
https://www.seamusgolf.com/blogs/news/8474097-alderwood-country-club-an-airport-runway-that-once-hosted-the-1937-us-amateur-portland-oregon

[JimB]

Santa Barbara Muni. The 11th fairway occupies the original runway.

[JohnVDB]

For one where the airport replaced the golf course, in 1937, the US Amateur was played at Alderwood Country Club in Portland, OR.  Portland Internstional Airport is now where the course was.

[Kalen Braley]

Wingpointe in SLC also got the reverse jobbing.


After the FAA updated it leasing rules, they got promptly put out of business.  What a waste as that land just sits there and I don't know who in their right mind would actually build on it as its surrounded by both runaways to the north and freeway and access roads on all other sides.

[Stewart Abramson]

There's a runway between the second and eighth fairways at Airway Meadows Golf Course in Gansevoort, NY (just outside of Saratoga Springs). Last time I played there it was still an active runway.

[Sam Andrews]

Denham might as well become an airport, given the volume of flying from the next door airfield. London Lydd International (I kid you not) plans to take some of the golf course to extend its runway.

[Ronald Montesano]

Percy Belgrave "Laddie" Lucas and his beloved Princes

Quoted from a National Club Golfer article

"He aimed straight down the course, avoiding the 2nd, 4th, 8th, 9th and 12th fairways before coming down just beyond the boundary fence at the far end of the course."

[Greg Hohman]

Thanks for pointing in so many directions! Two follow ups for now. 

Mike: I wish a runway were “resting in peace” under Sewickley Heights GC, however the club says there is no such thing. SH History Center and a former Herald editor also have no knowledge of a runway there. Sewickley Valley Historical Society has not indulged my curiosity.
 
Tim: knowing that about March AFB General Old means something (inchoate at this point) because my partner’s beloved uncle is buried at the adjoining Riverside National Cemetery.

[Adam Lawrence]

Percy Belgrave "Laddie" Lucas and his beloved Princes

Quoted from a National Club Golfer article

"He aimed straight down the course, avoiding the 2nd, 4th, 8th, 9th and 12th fairways before coming down just beyond the boundary fence at the far end of the course."

Yeah, there's a memorial out at the far end of the Himalayas nine -- a Spitfire propeller.

[Jeff_Brauer]

I designed the Links of Sierra Blanca over the old airport in Ruidoso, NM.  Not sure about the commercial success of the former airport.  The reason it closed was that the runways ended too close to a nearby mountain and too many planes crashed into it, not being able to gain altitude fast enough.


On an early construction visit, where some runways hadn't been demolished yet, Jim Colbert joked that they were the widest cart paths he had ever seen.  On a more cautionary note, where large amounts of concrete with re-bar are buried for disposal, the number of lightning strikes in that area tends to go up, not a good thing for any golf course.

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