mike thanks for that additional info on BHF and PM east.
do you know who did the original 18 at BHF? my family has a cabin up near there. we have had some good times on fall trips playing the old time resorts in that area.
BHF, PM, skytop, water gap, and maybe throw in glenbrook.
i do agree that the red nine @ BHF is pretty good particulary the holes across the road.
D_Malley,
The original 18 holes at Buck Hill Falls were built by the exact same bunch of guys who build the original nine at Pocono Manor...Quaker men from the Philadelphia region who belonged to the "Ozone Club", a golf club that played at many regional courses but did not have an official home course of their own (although many, including their patriarch Samuel Allen, were members of Moorestown Field Club in NJ, which Allen also designed in 1911).
Samuel Allen was really the leader of these men from a golf standpoint, but the man who developed the Buck Hill Falls resort early on was owner Charles Jenkins, also a prominent member of the Ozone Club. His father originally bought the land, but died soon after during a tragic fall into one of the gorges on the property.
Son Charles took over and built the first lodge in 1901, and by 1907 "golf experts" designed the first nine holes. Another nine followed in 1914, 3 years after Allen and the same fellows opened the first nine holes at Pocono Manor.
In 1918, it was reported that; “Donald Ross, one of America’s foremost architects, is employed to the study the golf links and present a plan for increasing to 27 holes.” By 1919, a report indicated that Ross laid out nine new holes, but they must have been difficult to build because it wasn't until 1921 that it was reported, “New nine holes completed at the cost of over $100,000. Some of the holes, extremely expensive to build with No.3 on the Blue costing $13,000 and No.4 $15,000."
I'm not sure when Robert White was there, but it is quite possible he laid out the second nine holes in 1914, as he was already working at nearby Shawnee at the time.
Samuel Allen was an engineer and an inventor, and the man responsible for incredible innovations to farming and construction equipment, and also the inventor of the "Flexible Flyer" sled.
When Allen was working on the design of Moorestown Field Club, no less an authority than A.W. Tillinghast wrote the following about him in 1911;
"THE NEW nine-hole course of the Field Club, Moorestown, N. J., will be opened early next spring. Provision is made not only for golf but for cricket, soccer, hockey and tennis.
Mr. Samuel L. Allen who has really been at the head of the work on the new course at Moorestown, has long been a very close student of the many courses which are famous both in America and abroad. He has introduced many pleasing features in the arrangement of the nine holes."
"A very clear idea of the new Moorestown course can be obtained from the sketch which Mr. Allen has prepared. It will be noticed that the fourth hole is so arranged as to make practically two holes, one tee making the distance 175 yards and the other 210 yards and the same idea is carried out on the eighth hole, the shorter shots being played on the first round. The shell bunkers are of a style that one sees a good many of in England. They are shaped something like a musselshell lying with its open side to the sky, sand being placed only in the back part against the hinge portion of the shell, as it were, while the lip is in grass and made sloping."
Tilly also wrote about the Ozone Club and their plans for this course a year earlier in 1910;
"The club at Moorestown, N. J., has purchased forty-six acres on which they will lay out a new nine-hole course. The ground is close by the old course. Like many of the Philadelphia golf organizations, the club was originally devoted to cricket and tennis, which still flourish there, but when golf claimed its devotees from the membership list, a nine-hole course was the natural result. It was crude in the beginning—the first drive being over or through a fence (with "takes over" if you hit the rails) and the chief menace near one green loomed up in the shape of a chicken coop."
"Of course, in time the grounds were greatly improved and the good people of Moorestown waxed enthusiastic in the joy of following the ball. The purchase of ground for a new course is the consequence."
"Some years ago a few of the keenest members created the Ozone Club for the purpose of making pilgrimages to various links from time to time for a day in the open. By reason of the knowledge gained on their explorations it is safe to predict that the new course will be well planned."