The purpose of this post is to document the various sources, over the years, of the discovery by George A. Crump of the Pine Valley property. If you’re interested in Pine Valley, I've gathered as many of the stories about the discovery as I can find. It’s a small piece of the PV puzzle, but I found it interesting.[/size]
Some months ago Tom MacWood was espousing his conclusion that George A. Crump’s discovery of the Pine Valley property as an ideal spot for a golf course was the result of “hunting” the property. Concurrently he was calling Tillinghast’s “train” story a myth. In support of his conclusion that Crump discovered the property while hunting, he cited eight people who he claimed espoused the hunting story. To support his claim that the Tillinghast train story was a myth he produced five facts/questions that he felt proved that the train story wasn’t possible, that it was a myth.
My curiosity was piqued, so I decided to track down the 8 “hunting” stories that were antithetical to the “train” story. I was curious as to what was actually written on both sides and how there could be two such distinct stories regarding the discovery and why the outcome had to be an either/or conclusion.
Tom was not very helpful in citing the source and date of the 8 hunting stories, admonishing me to go find them. Well, eventually I found all of them.
Following are the 8 “hunting” stories, as proposed by Tom MacWood, in chronological order.
1914 Joe Bunker "
George A. Crump a few years ago while taking a horseback trip near Clementon, New Jersey, was so impressed with a sandy tract that he invited a number of Philadelphians to go on an exploring trip with him. They found a tract of virgin forest made up chiefly of scrub oak and pine and then and there decided that it contained a splendid golf course."
There is no mention of Crump hunting. Or, that he knew the land from his youth. The horseback ride may well have been on the Virginia Ireland estate across the RR tracks from Pine Valley’s site. Or, it could have been anywhere else “near” Clementon. Only when he took a number of Philadelphians to explore it with him did he decide it would be a splendid golf course, not from the train and not while hunting.
1915 Simon Carr “
They desired a course where there would be
practically no closed season throughout the year. In
discussing the problem, they had the seaside in mind,
chiefly the region about Atlantic City; but the great
distance from Philadelphia, and the extreme difficulty
of securing a suitable location, caused the
project of a seashore course to be dropped.
The region outside of Camden was searched in all
directions, until, finally, Mr. George A. Crump discovered
a perfectly wonderful bit of golf land at
Sumner Station, on the Atlantic City Division of the
Reading Railroad, thirteen miles outside of Camden.
"I think we have happened on something pretty
fine," he reported to his friends in Philadelphia. His
friends hastened down to have a look at the discovery.
The tract was heavily wooded with pine and oak, and
had an undergrowth as dense as a jungle. For a
month it was gone over carefully on foot; every detail
of conformation was noted; the soil carefully examined
in all parts, and, finally, in October, 1912, a
tract of 184 acres was purchased.”
Carr, who was certainly contemporaneous with Crump and directly involved with Pine Valley, does not say anything about how Crump originally “discovered” the site other than he was searching in all directions. Certainly, nothing definitive here about discovery through “hunting”.
June 1921 Alan Wilson"
Pine Valley, to be entirely Irish, is made up of hills-big, bold, sandy
hills which some freak of nature has pushed up from the level Jersey plain
by which it is surrounded. Small lakes lie among them, and when George
Crump, while on a shooting trip, first discovered the country, it was covered
with a dense growth of pine and oak."
This is the first one that definitively says the property was discovered while on a hunting (shooting) trip. It is written a decade after the “discovery” and 3 years after Crump’s death. There is no indication of how Wilson heard the story, direct or indirect.
November 1921 Ellsworth Giles “
THE romance of the Pine Valley Golf,
Club of Philadelphia clusters about the
life and charming personality of the
lamented George W. Crump, a Philadelphian
whose memory his former golfing confreres
delight to honor. Could a Fenimore Cooper
unfold the fascinating story of the conception
and inception of Pine Valley, with Crump the
Pathfinder, it would grip us like a chapter
from the Leather Stocking Tales laid around
Otsego Lake, on whose picturesque shores
now nestle two nine-hole golf courses, where
In place of a wigwam stands the Colonial
club house, and where once flew the poisoned
arrow now flies the "glory dimple," while
only a mashie shot away and on the blue
lake’s bosom rides majestically the immortal
"Natty Bumpo.”
The story goes, and it is not fiction, that
George Crump with dog and gun roamed the
wild uninhabited wastes and explored the
sand hills sheltered by the spreading pine
forests of Jersey. This practical dreamer,
while still a hotel proprietor in the Quaker
City, had set for himself the million-dollar
goal which, when reached, should entitle him
to retire from active business and devote the
remaining days of his life to fulfilling his
dream of helping to give to Philadelphia the
ideal golf links.” I included the lead in paragraph simply because I was taken by its grandiloquent style.
Giles gets more specific in describing a “dog and gun”. Although he doesn’t say “hunting”, I guess it’s implicit that he was hunting while roaming and exploring.
Giles and Wilson published their one line comments pretty close to each other and well after Crump’s death. Perhaps there was some kind of event at Pine Valley in 1921 that they both attended. Both one-liners sound to me like they were derived from the same source.
1925 J.E. Ford"
His only interests then were golf and hunting." "His rambles afield with his gun and dogs often took Crump thru the fastness of pine and oak below Clementon." Ford later states that Perrin and Crump "journeyed one morning late in the summer of 1912 to Sumner station on the Atlantic City division of the Reading Railroad. They plunged into the wilderness west of the railroad tracks"
The article was written 13 years after the fact. Again, there is a mention of gun and dogs with the hunting implicit, but no specific references to discovering the tract while hunting. The article goes on to describe Crump’s and Perrin’s thoughts and conversations and actions while exploring the property that summer day in 1912. Although Ford quotes the conversation of Crump and Perrin it seems unlikely that he was there since at no time does he insert himself into the scene. Since Crump was long dead, perhaps he got it from Perrin.
1926 Jerry Travers"
Over this rarely picturesque spot in the lowlands of Southern Jersey hovers the memory of the man who conceived it and to whose broad vision and unstinted energy Pine Valley now stands as a monument I met him some years ago George Crump, a splendid, whole-souled chap then in the fullness of his life. To him Pine Valley was the dream of a lifetime come true. As a boy he had traversed every foot of the sandy soil with a shotgun slung over his shoulder as he and his comrades spent days in the woods bagging quail, which were to be found in abundance there. It was the place of his dreams. In his later years, when he had prospered and found his notch in the world of business as a hotel owner of wealth and affluence, his eyes and heart turned again toward the wooden spot in which he found so much joy in his youth. George Crump told me of it himself. The vision of Pine Valley transformed into a masterpiece of golf architecture came to him on one of those exhilarating expeditions he was again making over its white-grained expanses and through its quail-inhabited thickets"
The quote comes from a book entitled "The Fifth Estate" that Travers co-wrote with James R. Crowell. Travers claims to have heard about Pine Valley directly from George Crump. James Crowell appears to have been a professional writer on many subjects. It is likely that he wrote the book based on Travers' remembrances.
Travers was the best amateur golfer of his time who had met Crump in competition, including a 14 &13 thrashing that was the then largest margin of victory ever. Travers describes in the book when he first saw Pine Valley:
"
The first time I saw Pine Valley was in the late
afternoon of a fine summer day some years ago,
when only fourteen holes had been completed.
That same day I had won an invitation tournament
at the Huntington Valley Country Club, in
the suburbs of Philadelphia, and was at the top of
my form.This was likely in 1915.
The story says that Crump hunted quail "as a boy" with a shotgun and in the company of "his comrades". Seems a little romantic to me to envisage "boys" hunting with shotguns and knowing that they are on land that would become Pine Valley 15 or 20 years later. The Pine Valley tract was private property with Bowman the owner when Crump was a boy. There is no mention of hunting it in 1909 as Shelley later describes based on photographs. I question how he could have been hunting on it both as a boy and when he rediscovered it as a potential golf course.
1927 Thomas Uzzell “
Mr. Crump was the son of a British Consul to
this country who was a great huntsman and who
purchased the present property near the village of
Clementon, New Jersey, as a hunting preserve.
The son, inheriting the property, became interested
in golf and sensing the matchless appropriateness
of the land for a golf course devoted himself
wholeheartedly to producing the finest layout
money, devotion, and human ingenuity could
devise. He began the work in 1910 from his home
at Merchantsville near Philadelphia."
Uzzell’s basic premise that Crump’s father bought the property as a hunting preserve and that Crump inherited it and became interested in golf is factually incorrect. The deeds prove that Crump purchased the land from Lumberton sand company who in turn had purchased it from Kratz.
This part of the article provides no credible support for the hunting story. Uzzell just plain got it wrong for reasons unknown to me.
1927 Jack Nunneville "
Mr. Crump bought over 300 acres of ground years
ago for a hunting preserve and tramped it time and
again with his dogs, for he was a great huntsman."
Nunneville statement that Crump bought the property “years ago” as a “hunting preserve” is also factually incorrect. Given that he and Uzzell published in the same year suggests that one was derivative of the other’s error or they both got the same erroneous story from some other source who was in error.
This article also provides no credible support for the hunting story.
1948 Herbert Warren Wind“
One of the great courses of the world, Pine Valley, was the work of a non-professional architect, George Crump. One day when Crump was out hunting in the harsh stretches of sand and pine in western New Jersey, the idea came to him that this was the perfect land for building a golf course that would be fundamentally fair and yet would be a course that would stand up to the wizards who were making scores in the 60’s seem as prosaic as brushing your teeth.”This one comes well after the fact, so must have been derivative of some other source. Wind was certainly not there at the time.
One wonders where all the “wizards” making scores in the 60’s came from in the Crump era. Travers was reportedly the only scratch amateur in the 1900’s and medal scores in tournaments at the time seemed to be more in the mid to high 70’s to low 80’s. Perhaps Wind was embellishing a bit.
There was also a picture accompanying the story in Wind’s book, Golf in America, from which this quote comes. I can’t say with certainty whether this picture was in the 1948 edition or was added in later editions. It is the “hunting” photo that has been posted here a number of times. I would guess that Wind would have got a copy of it from the Pine Valley archives. Perhaps Wilson, Giles and Ford had seen the picture at Pine Valley before they wrote about hunting. The picture, of course, doesn’t show a gun or dog(s).
1982 Warner Shelley"
Some reporting by the press at the time mentioned Crump had seen the property from the train. But there is proof that in fact he knew the grounds by tramping through them with his gun and dogs while hunting for small game with which the property was well blessed. A photo of Crump resting amid the pines in 1909 is testimony of that fact. It could be that, in tramping through the grounds, he saw more of the trees and shrubs than the forest and perhaps only realized the rolling nature and the possibilities when he saw it at a greater distance from the train. In any case, he found a great location for the building of a golf course, no matter how."
This piece was certainly written well after the fact. Clearly Shelley had access to the photo that is published in Wind’s book. The picture does indeed show Crump “resting amid the pines”. The quality of the “proof” rests squarely on the date of 1909 and the supposition that it was taken somewhere on what became Pine Valley property 3 to 4 years later. The proof would be more compelling if we could vet how the timing and location of the photo was arrived at. Hence, Pat’s pursuit of the supposed caption on the back of the photo.
Shelley does allow that Crump may have only realized the rolling nature and possibilities of the site when he saw it at a greater distance from the train.
Recently, another hunting picture has come to my attention. This one is purportedly of Crump hunting, but this time with both gun and dogs visible. Perhaps the writers in the 1920’s had seen this picture in addition to or in place of the other “resting amid the pines” picture. Again, this picture would be compelling that Crump hunted the property, if the location and date of the picture could be vetted.
2000 Jim Finegan"What is obvious is that George Crump, a search committee of one, took his obligation seriously. For years, Pine Valley lore had it that Crump spotted the land from a train window one wintry Saturday on his way to Atlantic City and said to himself, "What a place for a golf course!" But as Warner Shelley points out in his invaluable Pine Valley Golf Club: A Chronicle, published in 1982, "... he [Crump] knew the grounds by tramping through them with his gun and dogs. A photo of Crump resting amid the pines in 1909 is a testimony of that fact..."
"
For years Pine Valley lore had it that Crump spotted the land from a train window one wintry Saturday on his way to the seashore and said to himself, "What a place for a golf course!" More recently, however, evidence has surfaced that he had come to know the ground by virtue of hunting for small game there. In any event, as 1912 was drawing to a close, he wrote to his friends: "I think I have landed on something pretty fine."
This one is also clearly written well after the fact and is derivative of other sources. The evidence that Finegan mentions seems likely to have been the hunting picture that Shelley offers as “proof”.
2005 Thomas MacWood“
There are a number of legends surrounding how Crump found the site. The two most common: Crump discovered the site gazing out the window of a train on his way to or from Atlantic City or Crump knew of the site from hunting trips, perhaps even as a boy. Another tale claimed he inherited the land from his father. An erroneous variation of the train story had British golf architect Colt on board with him.
The two most popular stories come from very reliable sources: the train window story comes from AW Tillinghast and John Arthur Brown, the hunting story from Jerome Travers and Alan Wilson. I suspect they are both true. He discovered the wild site from a train with perhaps an eye for shooting rather than golf, but once he began wandering the site gun in hand, he found the most perfect land for golf, land not unlike the rugged heathland outside London.”
This article was also written well after the fact and derived from other sources. In 2005, Tom was apparently of the opinion that Crump discovered the site, for hunting, from the train and recognized it as perfect ground for golf while hunting.
(to be continued)