Jeff,
You were a slacker. I was hoping for all 18 holes to be laid out according to CBM's list of lengths. I assume you're saying by implication that the first thirteen holes were laid out over both the Johnson and Dallas properties. I'd agree with your conclusions in the last paragraph.
Now, IF Francis recollected the swap dimensions accurately and IF we accepted that the land at the north end of the Johnson property wasn't initially part of the golf course property so that Francis could swap for it, THEN, based on your routing we can see how he felt it would be difficult to fit the last five holes in with any resemblance to a championship course.
Bryan,
The problem is that Francis clearly did NOT reflect exactly what happened 40 years later. What was he going to say for a brief article in the US Open program...? "Well, we took a piece of land running curvilnearly along our working boundary, and widened it along the length of over 400 yards by about on average 25 yards, and to compensate for that we had some land across the street from the clubhouse that we gave back that was about six acres, but there was more acreage there, and also north of where we wanted to place the 15th green/16th tee that we couldn't use, and also needed some more land behind the 1st green that actually crossed a bit outside the Johnson Farm land property..."
The problem is that both you and Jim are trying to put a square peg in a round hole by insisting that Francis 40 years later HAD to mean that they swapped for the whole triangle. He simply meant they needed to widen the area up there to 130 yards wide to make everything fit.
The more facts we learn, the clearer it becomes that any literal interpretation of Francis leads to absolutely preposterous results.
What are those facts;
1) The first 13 holes had been routed.
2) There was land west of the present course along GHR of no use to any golf plans. (now covered by fine homes)
3) For a literal interpretation of Francis to be true, they would have been routing on a Johnson Farm truncated in the north at the Haverford College boundary, liekly giving them 108.5 acres of Johnson Farm + 21.1 acres of Dallas Estate for a total purchase of 129.6 + 3 acres railroad land = 132.6 acres total.
This drawing should help to illustrate;
The
red bounded section marked "1" shows the areas where the first 13 holes had already been routed.
The
yellow marked "2" is the boundary of the quarry, unusable for tees, fairways, and greens.
The
blue bounded section is the northwestern boundary of the Johnson Farm. The large area marked "3" across from the clubhouse would be the supposed land west of the present course "that was not used for any golf layout".
The
green boundary makred "4" is the area that they would have supposedly been trying to fit the five finishing holes of their championshp course into, if we take Francis to the letter of his remarks rather than the spirit of them.
The
orange is a crudely drawn location of the "approximate road" as seen on the November 1910 Land Plan.
I think I understand why you were trying to get Jeff to do a routing on this land because you're trying to see if there was enough here for an 18 hole golf course. You're basically trying to see if a professional architect could make it work.
The problem is that we already know that 13 holes were pre-configured and had already used up a par three on the back nine.
So, in reality, what you should be asking Jeff or anyone to attempt is to build out the Final Five Holes of their championship course on the land encircled in green, because according to the literal interpretation of the Francis theory, that is all that would be left!
We also know already that for some crazy reason (which makes no sense given the limited overall property), the land west marked as "3" was not part of any golf plan?!
Bryan and Jim...seriously...how would that make any sense at all if the property ended north at Haverford College? They would have had to have tried to use this land for golf, wouldn't they?!?
Otherwise, you're arguing that they went ahead and routed the first 13 holes all the while knowing that they didn't have nearly enough land to work with north of the clubhouse. That would have been insane!
Why wouldn't they have used the entire 132 acres at their disposal to route the course??
For a literal interpretation of the Francis Swap to be true, they would have THEN swapped for what we know is 4.8 acres of land (the "triangle") up by 15green/16tee (making the overall course now 137.4), but would have given up in return OVER SEVENTEEN ACRES IN RETURN across from the clubhouse that for some insane unexplainable reason was supposedly somehow deemed as "not part of any golf layout"!! Wouldn't it make much more sense for Francis to simply be talking about the overall width he needed to create up there the by going beyond the "working boundary" to the west (west of the orange line) along 14 & 15 so that those holes fit, and then giving back acreage down below where it bowed in anyway (east of the orange line) by the clubhouse to keep similar acreage for real estate?