Golf in the Gilded Age:
Robber Barons, Railroads, and Resort Hotels
5: Railroads and Resorts

1. Birth of Golf in America	2. Gilded Age	3. Robber Barons	4. Tycoons and Patronage
5. Railroads & Resorts	6. Early Grand Hotels	7. Carolinas	8. Georgia
9. Jacksonville	10. St Augustine	11. St Aug. (pt 2)	12. Ormond Beach
13. Palm Beach	14. Boca Raton	15. Miami	16. Miami Beach
17. Coral Gables	18. Tampa / St Pete	19. Later Resort Golf	20. Gilded Age Legacy

American golf had its birth in the Gilded Age (1870s-1890s), and by the close of the 19th century the United States had more golf courses than Britain. This start is inextricably intertwined with the dominant Tycoons of the day, and this in turn entangles the foundation of golf in America with the expansion of their railroads and their associated Grand Hotels in exclusive resort locations.

From 1900 to the advent of WWII, golf in America added sinew and muscle on this underlying frame to make the Resort golf experience truly spectacular and widely accessible outside the echelons of elite society. The enduring legacy has been that the popularization of golf in America is indelibly stamped with the watermark of excellence set by these fabulous early Resorts.

RAILROADS & RESORTS

D. The Union Pacific Durants and the Adirondacks

William West Durant was born in Brooklyn in 1850, and educated in England and Germany. His father, Dr. Thomas C. Durant, a vice-president of the Union Pacific railroad, accumulated one of the great fortunes in nineteenth century America. By the 1880s the Durant family had acquired 658,261 acres of Adirondack land and William arrived in the region to manage the family's investments. Accustomed to refinement, Durant modeled his Adirondack developments after the baronial hunting estates of European aristocracy. In the process he developed the unique architectural style for what became known as Adirondack Great Camps. Owners of Great Camps acquired vast land holdings, which included wilderness lakes, ponds, and rivers. The camps, actually small isolated villages, were self-sufficient, and often included working farms, greenhouses, icehouses, and even chapels. They were very expensive to build and maintain. The region's isolation was a major obstacle to Durant's development plans. In an effort to attract wealthy tourists, the family built and operated railroads, steamboats lines, roads, sawmills, and a grand resort hotel, the Prospect House in Blue Mountain Lake, New York. By the 1890s Durant was financially overextended. Despite his growing money problems, Durant began a new project in the spring of 1899; the Eagle's Nest Country Club. In the summer of 1900 the country club and its golf course were opened with a series of exhibition matches played by the Scottish professional, Harry Vardon. Vardon's fee was $500 for the week and a bottle of Scotch whiskey every night. On Saturday night, August 4, to celebrate the opening, Durant gave a dance at the club's casino, to the music of an eight-piece orchestra, brought from Utica. Durant spent nearly $70,000 building the Eagle's Nest Country Club. By 1904, awash in a sea of lawsuits, including one brought by his own sister, Durant lost control of his Adirondack lands. The assets of Durant's company were seized by creditors who, in turn, sold the country club's land to three New York City men: Ernst Ehrman, Henry Morgenthau Sr., and Berthold Hochschild. The three formed a holding company for the land called the Eagle Nest Country Club. Beginning in 1904 Berthold Hochschild, his wife Mathilde, and his sons Harold and Walter spent June through September every year at Eagle Nest. First the father, then the sons, commuted on the New York Central's sleeper car from Grand Central Station in New York City to spend weekends at the family's summer home Durant's railroad-steamboat network was still the principal means for getting to the region in 1904.

Prospect House, Blue Mountain Lake, NY

http://www.prospectpt.com/History.html

The grand old Prospect House (1881-1915) which played host to the nation's elite, was the toast of a bygone age. Thomas Edison personally rendered it the first hotel in the world with an electric light in every room. Among the guests were Astors, Tiffanys, Whitneys, Vanderbilts, Pierreponts, Macys, Mellons, Colgates, Lippincotts, Roosevelts, Juilliards, Clevelands, Polks, Colts, Vassars, Rothschilds, Huntingtons, Schuylers, van Rensselaers, Delafields, Biddles, Harrimans, Auchincloss's, Garrisons, Bloomingdales, Stuyvesants, Rikers, Osborns, Westinghouses, Fahnestocks, Drexels, Hirschorns, Schwabs, Guggenheimers, Woolworths, and many others.

Eagle's Nest CC, opened August 1900

http://adkattic.blogspot.com/2006_07_01_archive.html

NY to Eagle's Nest via the NY Central sleeper car from Grand Central Station

Private Rail Car NYC to the Adirondacks ca. 1900

Adirondacks Museum / Adirondacks Attic

http://www.adkmuseum.org/about_us/adirondack_journal/?id=6

NYC RR Museum

http://www.epodunk.com/cgi-bin/genInfo.php?locIndex=287259

Durant's Boss, and the principal creator of the Central Pacific / Southern Pacific system, Corliss Huntington, died at his Adirondacks camp Pine Knot.

NY Times obituary

The birthplace of the Adirondack style of architecture, Camp Pine Knot was the first of the Great Camps of the Adirondacks. "Begun in 1877 and designed primarily by William West Durant, an innovator in the field of Adirondack camp design and one of the first promoters of the region, Pine Knot formed the prototype for the decentralized-type Adirondack camp and proved a landmark architectural essay in the form's development," explained Krattinger. The structural design represented a blend of Durant's experiences in Europe and his exposure to the vernacular architecture of the Adirondack region. "Camp Pine Knot, with its rustic, interrelated buildings developed sensitively within a remote and secluded location on Raquette Lake, offered the prototype for the American Adirondack Camp," added Krattinger. "The influence of these camps, which formed both architectural and social expressions of the patrons who financed their design and construction, extended well beyond the Adirondack region, and remains clearly readable in much of the rustic architecture of our larger National Parks in the western United States." Durant's ownership was transferred to Collis P. Huntington in 1895. Huntington died at the Raquette Lake camp on August 13, 1900. In the mid-1940s, SUNY Cortland faculty discovered the unused camp and the College negotiated with the Huntington family to purchase it for its outdoor education classes. In 1948, ownership was deeded to the Cortland State Teachers College and renamed Huntington Memorial Camp.

SUNY Cortland

SR Stoddard, Adirondacks (1895) (article with photos of Camp Pine Knot lodge)

Adirondack Style: Camp Pine Knot

Camp Pine Knot was built by William West Durant and sold to railroad magnate Collis P. Huntington in 1895. In 1947, HuntingtonÕs son, Archer, and his wife, Anna, presented to the College the original 201-acre site and historical buildings in the memory of Collis P. Huntington.

Chronological History

1846	William Wood and Matthew Beach first settlers at Raquette Lake.
1865-1871	Dr. Thomas Clark Durrant supervised construction of the Adirondack railroad (60 miles) Saratoga to North Creek.
1876	William West Durant's first visit to the Adirondacks
1877	Camp Pine Knot, first of the famous "great camps of the Adirondacks," was built by William West Durant at Pine Knot Point on Raquette Lake. The woodlands camps which Durant built, including Camp Uncas, Sagamore and Kill Kare, reflect the glory of an era when wealthy families journeyed to the Adirondacks for leisure time pursuits at luxurious enclaves.
1879	Travel time from New York City to Blue Mountain Lake was 26 hours. Stage coach from North Creek to Blue Mountain took approximately eight hours.
1882	The building now known as the "Swiss Chalet" was completed and opened as one of the main buildings at Camp Pine Knot.
1895	Durant sold Camp Pine Knot and its 200 acres of property to Collis P. Huntington, railroad builder and financier. Excerpts from S. R. Stoddard's The Adirondacks, 25th Edition, 1895
1900	Collis P. Huntington died Aug. 13 at Camp Pine Knot at the age of 79. Following his death, the family never returned to occupy Camp Pine Knot, which remained idle for almost 50 years.

E. Upper Hudson Valley Saratoga Springs

Canfield Casino, Saratoga Springs NY, ca 1870s.

Canfield Casino Parlor, built 1871

Canfield Casino Room, Saratoga Springs, where $100,000s changed hands nightly -- a small American version of the Monte Carlo Casinos famous since the 1860s.

Canfield Casino Ballroom, 1902

The Sagamore Hotel (opened 1883) - Philadelphia's Millionaire Row in the Adirondacks, Lake George, featuring a 1928 Sagamore Golf Course by Donald Ross.

History of the Sagamore

F. Lehigh Valley RR & Lackawana in the Catskills

"The train consists of one baggage and library car, two day coaches, a dining car and one Pullman parlor car with an observation end. The equipment, put on last month, is entirely new, and we are informed that. This new equipment has been constructed from plans especially designed to provide the acme of comfort and safety, and the builders have put upon it the very best skill, resulting in the production of a train which warrants a renewal of the name first applied when the Black Diamond Express was inaugurated in 1896, 'The Handsomest Train in the World.' The train operates on its present fast schedule between New York and Buffalo, having a through coach from and to Philadelphia."

The Black Diamond on the Lehigh, Catskill Archive

1881 ad for the Grand Hotel, Highmount NY, with the passenger train on the cover.

1904: "parlor cars from New York direct to the hotel grounds in 31/2 hours"

The name "Black Diamond" refers to a hard anthracite coal that minimizes smoke when it burns, thus justifying the LVRR advertising slogan "The Cleanest Train in the World."

Phoebe Snow of the Lackawanna line would beg to differ.

1900: The Advertising Campaign Rail travel around the year 1900 was a messy business. After a long trip on a coal-powered train, travellers would frequently emerge covered in black soot. The exception to that rule were locomotives powered by anthracite, a clean-burning form of coal. The Lackawanna owned vast anthracite mines in Pennsylvania, and could legitimately claim that their passengers' clothes would still look clean after a long trip. To promote this fact, their advertising department created Phoebe Snow, a young New York socialite, and a frequent passenger of the Lackawanna.

For reasons never explained, Miss Snow often travelled to Buffalo, New York, always wearing a white dress. The first ad featured the image of Phoebe and a short poem:

Says Phoebe Snow about to go
upon a trip to Buffalo
"My gown stays white
from morn till night
Upon the Road of Anthracite"

The campaign became a popular one, and soon Phoebe began to enjoy all the benefits offered by DL&W: Gourmet food, courteous attendants, an observation deck, even on-board electric lights: Now Phoebe may by night or day enjoy her book upon the way Electric light dispels the night Upon the Road of Anthracite Phoebe soon became one of the United States' most recognized advertising mascots. During World War I, anthracite was needed for the war effort, and its use on railroads was prohibited, thus ending her career, but her legend remained alive among railroad fans.

Phoebe Snow, Wikipedia

LVRR Website

Black Diamond Express (1896), James H. White film (Edison Manufacturing Co. b/w silent short documentary)

(The Black Diamond Express, the fastest train of the Lehigh Valley Railroad, speeds along the track, moving directly towards the camera. As it approaches, a group of workers along the tracks pull back from the rails. Some of them begin to wave at the train as it comes nearer.

A romance of the rail / Thomas A. Edison, Inc. (Phoebe Snow / Lackawana Railroad scene)

SUMMARY From Edison films catalog: A series of railroad scenes of novel and amusing interest. It opens with a view of an imposing station showing a pretty girl, dressed in white, seated on a trunk awaiting the arrival of her train. A young man approaches, also dressed in white, and the two immediately fall in love. The Lackawanna Limited then rolls into the station and the Pullman porter helps the couple aboard. As the Limited pulls out the pair are seen on the observation platform waving adieu to their friends. The picture later shows the train rushing sixty miles an hour through the famous Delaware Water Gap in the Blue Ridge Mountains, with the young couple enjoying the passing scenery. As Delaware Water Gap station is reached a porter appears with his brush, but the young people protest that the journey has been so free from dust that there is no need for his services. The climax comes when the young man, who has become more and more infatuated, secures a minister and the marriage ceremony takes place on the rear platform. The picture shows them leaving the train on arrival at the Gap, and a little humor is added at the end by the appearance of two tramps from beneath the trucks of the observation car dressed in full evening clothes, who become indignant at the offer of the porter to brush them off, as their trip has been entirely free from soot and dust. The series is full of snappy train scenes and is certain to provoke a laugh. Length 275 feet.

According to Edison film historian C. Musser, this film parodies an advertising campaign developed by the Lackawanna Railroad to counter its reputation as the "Road of Anthracite" coal carrier. The campaign featured passenger Phoebe Snow, dressed in white, who rode the rails and praised the line's cleanliness with such slogans as: "Says Phoebe Snow, about to go upon a trip to Buffalo: 'My gown stays white from morn till night upon the Road of Anthracite.'" Filmed in August 1903, along the Lackawanna Railroad.