Pine Valley and Topos

[Patrick_Mucci]

I recently came into possession of some great photos of PV pre, post and during construction.

It's really hard to imagine that anyone saw a golf course on that property, especially from a passing train.

So, I have to ask myself, how much of Pine Valley was "discovered/designed" by field expeditions versus topos ?

When you consider how relevant PV has been and continues to be in the world of golf, it's hard to imagine that a novice, with no prior architectural experience, crafted this masterpiece on that parcel of property, by the seat of his pants.

Now I know that like Bill Coore, he camped out and practically lived there, but, if you hadn't done it before, what would you know to look for ?

Are the topos the key to the design ?

Living and breathing the site in the field ?

Or a combination of both ?

And if a combination, what's the weighting between topo and field ?

[Mike Cirba]

Patrick,

While it might be "really hard to imagine", we don't need to imagine much as the process is amazingly well documented contemporaneously by AW Tillnghast, from train ride inception to Crump's death.

Topos are very useful, and clearly these guys worked with them.   However, nothing trumps time spent onsite and I think the history of golf course design past and present makes that case pretty clearly.

[Ally Mcintosh]

Are the topos the key to the design ?

Living and breathing the site in the field ?

Or a combination of both ?

And if a combination, what's the weighting between topo and field ?

It's a combination of both Patrick but I think it's far easier to start with an on site analysis and then spend a large amount of time trying to route and make a cohesive course on a topo... Regular visits to site (the more the better) of course help but you will always have to revert back to the topo to double-check measurements and a sense of scale.

Obviously, the more time a Client allows you in the conceptual routing phase (See Bill Coore at Friar's Head), the more time you can spend with both site and topo and the better the outcome will (should) be... In an ideal world, you place yourself on site for six months, live and breathe it and spend your evenings with the topo in your log cabin... Google Earth can help too...

For a tree covered site or a flat one with no vegetation, up the time on the topo and reduce the time on site...

If your client doesn't have a survey done, do your best on site only...

[Mike Cirba]

[ed_getka]

Mike,
    Thanks for sharing the article. Do you know who wrote it?
Patrick,
     What can you see in the pre-construction photos that would hint at the opportunity for a great course? From the article it seems that the greatness of the course was a foregone conclusion. Was that just an example of the enthusiasm we see for new courses on GCA at times, or was there something so compelling about the land pre-construction that the writer was justifiably convinced of the course's destiny to be one of the greatest?

[Joe Bausch]

Ed, I spent many weekends years ago gathering up articles written by Tilinghast for the Philadelphia Record.  That article above is from my collection.

[Mike Cirba]

Ed,

Thanks...the article (and many others) was written by AW Tillinghast and originally posted here by Joe Bausch a few years back.

I think it describes the initial discovery period very well, as well as the value of then creating a topo after a visual review of the land.

[Joe Bausch]

Here is that entire article (Jan 12, 1913 Philadelphia Record) where you can see Tilly's name at the end:

[ed_getka]

Joe,
   Thanks for sharing the whole article. It must have been a lot of legwork to pull all the clippings together.
Mike,
    How is the Cobbs Creek project coming along?

[Mike Cirba]

Ed,

A large hurdle was recently cleared with the EPA approving Philly's Stormwater Management Plan after reviewing it for two years.   

At this stage, there is a lot of optimism and our planners are working with the city's planners.   Stay tuned. 

[Rick Sides]

Pat could you post the pictures

[Patrick_Mucci]

Ally & Ed,

When a site is hostile, I"m not sure that time spent on it doesn't have diminishing returns.

Rick,

I wish I could.
The photos are in two books I recently acquired, one by Warner Shelly and the other by John Arthur Brown.
I'm looking for a third book by Ernie Ransome.

I'm not very computer literate and don't know how to take a photo in a book and post it on this site.

If I could, I would.

Mike,

I don't buy the train ride story for a second.
The land that comes into view from the train tracks does not in any way indicate that an incredible site was viewable.
Much of the golf course at PV, is ABOVE the railroad bed and as such, NOT visible from the tracks/cars.  The only land that is below grade is the 17th tee area, the site of the 16th green and the swamp turned pond between # 16 green, # 15 tee and # 15 fairway, and perhaps a portion of the current 18th fairway, but even that was obscured by trees.  This is clearly evident in the PRE-Construction photos.

You're once again, only too quick to defend the status quo, without prudent, concrete evidence to support your bold statements.

[Mike Cirba]

Patrick,

You really need to read more carefully before making outlandish accusations again.

Tillinghast was very close friends and a fellow winter traveler with Crump.   He knew what happened firsthand.

He tells us that Crump first spotted the land from the train on the ride to Atlantic City.   Why would it matter what was above or below grade when the reason it interested Crump was due to the unusual hilliness of the land in question?   He could certainly see that from the train, no?

Tilllinghast tells us that Crump then followed up with multiple motor rides out there to inspect the land in question on foot before purchasing.   He also brought his close friends like Tillinghast out there with him to inspect the land prior.   He didn't make the entire determination based on the train ride...but that's where he first spotted the land.

[Tom MacWood]

Pat
There are three or four different stories about how Crump discovered the site. The train window story I believe comes from Tilly. Joe Bunker said he discovered it while on horseback. Jerome Travers and some others claimed he hunted on the site as a boy and had known about the site for years. And Alan Wilson said he discovered it on a shooting trip.

The problem with train story is the fact that Crump probably made that train trip over a hundred times going back and forth from Atlantic City. And if he was so enthralled with that site why was he looking at Absecon originally as the site to build his golf course?

He wrote his friends in 1912 to tell them he thought he'd found the perfect site. He apparently had been looking all around that part of NJ, and had originally liked a site at Absecon.

IMO a merger of the Joe Bunker and Alan Wilson stories makes the most sense. He discovered the site while hunting in 1912.

[Mike Cirba]

Tom MacWood,

Were Joe Bunker, Jerry Travers, and/or Alan Wilson on the train with Crump each week in the winter traveling to Atlantic City to play golf, circa, 1910?

Of course he'd look to Absecon first....they wanted sandy soil and warmer temps for year-round golf and Atlantic City was their model.   Only when Crump was able to find the sandy land of PV, and started to consider that nearby Riverton also was nearly year-round did the plan start to coalesce.

Here is another account by Tillinghast from the February 1913 issue of American Cricketer, after his review of Merion under the headline, "Another New Course".

[Mike Cirba]

By the way, why couldn't all of those stories be true?

[Tom MacWood]

Tom MacWood,

Were Joe Bunker, Jerry Travers, and/or Alan Wilson on the train with Crump each week in the winter traveling to Atlantic City to play golf, circa, 1910?

Of course he'd look to Absecon first....they wanted sandy soil and warmer temps for year-round golf and Atlantic City was their model.   Only when Crump was able to find the sandy land of PV, and started to consider that nearby Riverton also was nearly year-round did the plan start to coalesce.

I don't know how often Joe Bunker, Jerome Travers or Alan Wilson joined Crump in AC, and it really doesn't matter. They knew Crump and his associates well. After the site in Absecon was ruled out because of mosquitoes, he looked at a site at Brown Mills on the edge of the NJ Pine Barrens. It is unknown why he rejected that site. The current location was apparently the third site considered.

Once you logically consider the facts, and understand what sites Crump was considering prior to the current site, the train window story makes little sense, but then again there are a lot of legends in Philadelphia that make little sense. What makes more sense is that Crump discovered the Pine Barrens region of NJ while traveling back and forth from AC. It is huge area and he would have travelled through large stretches of it. But if you are emotionally attached to the old train story, feel free...

[Mike Cirba]

Tom,

Left to choose between Tillinghast's first person account and your "logic" I know where I'd place my bet.  

Seriously, why couldn't all accounts be true?

[Tom MacWood]

Yes, I believe you can massage all the stories into one true story. That Crump discovered the huge Pinelands region of NJ while traveling on the train to AC. As a boy Crump used to hunt in portions of the huge Pinelands region of NJ. That Crump discovered the specific site while on a shooting trip in 1912. Crump was on horseback on that hunting trip when he discovered the specific site.

What is less easy to believe is the legend that has emerged from Tilly's account; the story that you have been telling with a few of your own additions. Where did you come up with the idea Crump made multiple motor rides out there to inspect the land in question on foot before purchasing?

[Mike Cirba]

What is less easy to believe is the legend that has emerged from Tilly's account; the story that you have been telling with a few of your own additions. Where did you come up with the idea Crump made multiple motor rides out there to inspect the land in question on foot before purchasing?


Tom,

Please see the second paragraph.  




I'm beginning to wonder if you and Patrick's anti-Philly bias isn't affecting your eyesight, or perhaps only your reading comprehension skills?!    

[Tom MacWood]

Mike
That is very interesting. So Tilly is claiming it took Crump two plus years, almost three, to determine the site was good? Is that your understanding, and if so, why did it take him so long because apparently he was looking elsewhere before settling.

The way I understand the formation of PV Crump and his closest friends, who were among the best golfers in Philadlelphia, were focused on accomplishing two goals. One, to create a difficult first class golf course that would elevate the level of play in Phila, and two, to create a top notch course nearby that could be played year round, or nearly year round. The majority of these men (maybe all of them) were companions who travelled to AC with Crump...WP Smith, AH Smith, Perrin, Carr, Buxton, etc. He was charged by this group to find the right site and this is what he wrote in a letter in the Fall of 1912:

"I think I have landed on something very fine. It is 14 miles below Camden, at a stop called Sumner, on the Reading RR to Atlantic City--a sandy soil, with rolling ground among the pines."

If he found the site in 1910, as Tilly suggests...almost 3 years before, and he had been exploring it for a couple of years, why did he keep it a secret from his friends for so long?

If Tilly was a close friend, confidant, and regular in this AC group why wasn't he an original founder and contributor? I don't believe he was ever a member of PV....is that your understanding?

[Patrick_Mucci]

Mike,

You can't see land that's well above grade, that's why I don't believe the train window story, unless of course he was sitting in seats on the
northern side of the car.

The site, which lies entirely to the South of the railroad, is so elevated above the railroad bed grade that 99 % of the course is invisible to the rider.  In addition to the grade issue, you have the dense forest issue.
The pre-construction photos indicate that much of the land was dense forest which would obscure the train travelers ability to see anything south of the tracks.

AWT's version is just that, a version, and a version contradicted by the physical properties and juxtaposition of the RR tracks and the land the golf course is sited on.

You prefer to discard the facts and rely on unsupported myths.

Me ?  I'd prefer that the facts tell us what happened and not Uncle Remus.

[Mike Cirba]

WP Smith, AW Tillinghast, George Crump


Tom MacWood,

Are you suggesting that Tillighast wasn't very close friends with Crump and didn't contemporaneously and accurately chronicle the creation of Pine Valley on a regular basis over many years for several publications?

The level of detail in the articles posted here on page one, and the many others he wrote over the years really belies that view.


Patrick,

Are you suggesting that your visual interpretation of the land of Pine Valley from a 100 year old photograph reproduced in a book is a superior one to Crump's real-world, in-personal visual perspective across 100s of acres from the train along nearly 1.5 miles of track, circa 1910??  

Or are you suggesting that Tillinghast, a close personal friend of Crump's, just made this stuff up to create a "myth" for you and MacWood to yet again pointlessly and groundlessly argue about with Philadelphians 100 years later?    

I've walked that entire stretch of tracks all the way from the Clementon Amusement Park to the end and am quite familiar with what can be seen from there and if you can't see the unusual rolling topography throughout that Tillinghast told us impressed George Crump then you aren't looking.


Jeez, Guys...

A cynic might suggest that you are both trying to cast doubt on the credibility of poor ole Tilly, simply because his close connections with the game and contemporaneous crediting of Wilson at Merion and Crump at Pine Valley back then flies in the face of your attempts at revisionist history of Philadelphia golf 100 years later.

Just saying...

[Tom MacWood]

Mike
That is a great photo of Tilly conducting an interview with Smith. What is your point in posting it?

I'm not suggesting anything. I asked you if Tilly was such a close friend, confidant, and regular in this AC group why wasn't he an original founder and contributor at PV? I don't believe he was ever a member of PV....am I correct?

[Mike Cirba]

Tom,

So from observing that photo you've concluded that Tillinghast is conducting an interview with William Poultney Smith, perhaps ignoring the total stranger to his left?   Perhaps I simply missed the corresponding audio clip you must have listened to where the conversation between the three can be posthumously heard?      

AW Tillinghast was in the first foursome ever to play Pine Valley when there were only a few holes open.   He scored the birdie there.   Years later he helped Crump discover the 13th hole and came up with the suggestion for the Hell's Half Acre hazard on the 7th.

In November 1914, Tilly wrote;

It was my privilege to be among the first taken by Mr. Crump to Pine Valley, when it was a perfect jungle, and at that time there was born the conviction that the course was destined to be a great one:  but it must be admitted that while the natural advantages were many, the greatness of the course can be traced to intelligent planning and development:  and the excellence of Pine Valley must ever be a monument to the man who had the courage of his convictions.

Perhaps he didn't NEED to join Pine Valley to play there, much like Tom Paul never saw the need to join Merion or Pine Valley yet could play there with a phone call?   Perhaps his budding architectural career was his focus, and he knew he'd be traveling frequently?

Your bias in these matters is beyond comprehension and is clearly clouding your ability to accurately analyze the materials in question.