I was going through my notes on Lakewood (in all of its iterations), and it struck me how the history of this club tracks the development of golf in the US leading up to the Golden Age.
First, you have the very early GC of Lakewood, laid out by Willie Dunn in 1893, extended to 18 holes in 1896.
Second, the Ocean County Hunt & CC (which would change its name to the CC of Lakewood) is laid out by Horace Rawlins in 1897. The same 9 hole course would be remodeled by R. B. Wilson and George Lawson in 1900.
In 1898, Bendelow comes in and builds a new 18 hole course for the GC on new land.
In 1902, the CC and the GC decide to merge, abandon both of their existing courses, and build an entirely new course on a new site. Around 8 years later that course is given an update, before finally being replaced by a new Travis creation in 1920.
Both of the pre-existing courses survived in some manner, the CC course being incorporated into part of Rockefeller's Lakewood estate, and the GC course being run by a hotel as the Pine Forest CC.
Just by my count, between 1893 and 1920 there were five separate new courses built in Lakewood, involving two major early players in Dunn and Bendelow, and culminating in the work of one of the greats of the Golden Age with Travis. The amount of activity, the transition from early resort to members club, the descriptions of changes from cop ridden battlefield to ingenious bunkering schemes and the constant battle to keep up with the length of the "modern" game are all benchmarks of how the game itself was changing in its early years in the US, and how courses were adapted to reflect changing styles and to present a consistent challenge.
Are there other examples like this that present a full panorama of the development of early US golf?