Pat:
Facts I am fully aware of, and I bet if you asked each of them who they considered to be their peers Travis would be one of the first people they named. But it is a fair point to make.
To compare (or contrast) Travis to MacDonald is an interesting exercise.
One built courses for millionaires, the other built courses in Troy, Scranton and on the coast of Maine.
One wrote an autobiography. The other wrote magazine articles.
Both were accomplished players.
Both had interests outside of the realm of design.
MacDonald was building courses before Travis had even arrived in America. Yet he consulted with Travis when we was building his masterpiece.
Where CBM created a style that to this day is immediately recognizable, it seems that Travis' influence is seen not necessarily in his work but in the way he helped advance golf course architecture in this country beyond the limited-dimension designs that pervaded the early American courses. If there was a guy behind the guy behind the guy back then, it may have been Travis.
Perhaps the more appropriate word would be "overshadowed." That doesn't mean that what Travis did wasn't important, wasn't innovative and didn't influence the work of those that came later. It just means that his name may not be one of the first to roll of the tongue during a discussion of the ODG's, but it certainly shouldn't be one of the last.
Sven