Phil - I dn't know if you've seen this or not:
Pat and I had (separately) played this course years ago.
Mountain Ridge Country Club (1913), like the Hutton Park course is the other 18 hole course that has become extinct. The first nine holes were completed in 1913 and located on Prospect Ave. where you find the present day Essex Green Plaza. These first nine holes were designed by golf professional Dave Hunter. The second nine holes were designed by A.W. Tillinghast who was working at the same time he was building the new Essex County CC course in 1917.
My cousin and long time resident of West Orange, Tom Fennell remembers the following about the course:
“Yes, I played that course many, many times. It was a very tough course, built on a hill and extended downhill to the next main street whose name I cannot remember. When I played it (1940s) the course was owned by a Scotsman about 60 years old. At some point he sold it to a couple of men, one of which I knew, and they ran it for a couple of years before selling to the developers (about 1953). He told me later that not only did they make a nice profit on the sale of the course, but then sold the greens separately for thousands per green. Let me say again, this was one tough course; I remember almost every hole and the hazards each had. I was unconscious one day and shot a 78, which I will remember forever. Ahh! the good old days.”
I myself was too young to play the course but lived nearby and remember being chased off the course by the greens keepers and seeing the two and a half story clubhouse up on the hill overlooking Prospect Avenue (pictured above). Remembering it now the clubhouse came right out of the Alfred Hitchcock movie Psycho.
Mountain Ridge was constructed in 1913 and was scheduled to open in May of that year as indicated in the newspaper article from the same year seen below.