There should be a night golf website directory type of thing.
They tend to not stick around so long and pop up and disappear, some have tried to persevere. Not many I'd guess...I haven't paid attention that closely in my 58 years. But I do feel these types of places were way more abundant in the 70's. Now it seems there's a little resurgence. I have fond memories of growing up playing them around the NW of Chicago. And I still went to them when I was older. There's something about a quick nine under the lights with just a couple of clubs. Or sometimes, the whole bag.
I can remember a few places although I know there were more.
Arlington Park Race Track in Arlington Heights IL, had a lighted 9 holer in the backyard of the Arlington Park Hilton in the 70's. It was part of a whole Hotel, Pool, restaurant, concert hall complex to attract people to go to the track. It was a field with flagsticks stuck out in the middle of a flat field basically. There might have 2 flat sand traps with no lips. Like two big piles of sand in the middle of field. It's now all gone. Even the Racetrack. The Bears might move there. Probably not. They were talking about that in the early 80's and the city of AH put its foot down. I
There was one around a small lake and town park just northwest of where the Rosemont Horizon was built, or whatever sponsor they're calling the place now. That one might still be there, but the lights would be gone. They pulled them down in the mid 80's I think.
Then there was one near O'Hare Airport in a relatively close hotel, right off the freeway (94? I think...man long time)
If you headed into the city from the NW suburbs on "I-94"you could see it to your right, butting right up to the freeway and McDonald's "Hamburger U" building.
There was another one that
Jim,
I used to play a pitch and putt under the lights right near O’hare. It would have been in the 1970s. It was a blast.
Ira
How cool to interact with someone who did. That has to be the last course I mention above. I never got to play it. They leveled it I believe by the time I could drive in high school, 1982. That place fascinated me. And it looked like it was a decent little course from the freeway.
I wonder these days, and even though I know little about such things, if it'd easier and cheaper to light little par 3 courses nowadays, simply because of the more abundant use of solar energy. I think every lighted par 3 that I knew of that shuttered, did so because of money. It cost a LOT to light it, and no one was coming.
I do so love quirky oddities like this in the sport of golf. It's like our home run walls in American baseball parks such as Fenway, Wrigley, right field Yankee Stadium, or center field Comiskey.