Golf in the Gilded Age:
Robber Barons, Railroads, and Resort Hotels
5: Railroads and Resort Hotels
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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
 M.
Northern Pacific Railroad
Train Times Zones antedated US Time Zones by decades
-- Times used to be set locally by high noon.
The scene is the broad piazza of the Mammoth Hot Springs
Hotel, and shows the arrival of tourists. Up dashes a spanking team
of six, seemingly as fresh and spirited as when they started. Friends
who are waiting on the piazza rush to greet the new arrivals and help
them alight. 50 feet. 7.50. Advertised as part of the "Alaska and Yellowstone
National Park Series" in the "Northern Pacific Railway Series" (Edison
films catalog): The following pictures were taken by our artists at
various points on the Northern Pacific Railway. We are greatly indebted
to their officials who afforded us every opportunity in their power
to obtain these splendid views. Many of the scenes are incident to the
excitement prevailing at the time of the Klondike gold rush. They show
the resources of this company for handling large numbers of people,
baggage, freight and excursion parties, and give to prospective tourists
and merchants an idea of the facilities with which this road handles
traffic of all kinds (p. 9).
Tacoma / Seattle
McClellan was selected in March 1873 to supervise the
survey for the location of the western terminus of the much-anticipated
Northwest Pacific Railway. However, the intervention of the Civil War
delayed actual construction of the road until the 1870's. Many small
communities on Puget Sound vied for the distinction of being the western
terminus. The selection of Tacoma was announced on July 14th, 1873 bringing
about a thrilling drama centered on the prairie near Gravelly Lake.
As the railroad progressed within a few miles of Tacoma in September
1873, a financial panic caused the railroad's financiers to fail. With
the railroad's solvency in question and payrolls in arrears, the construction
crew made up largely of tough ex-miners from the Cariboo gold fields
of British Columbia, refused to work; they set up barricades at Clover
Creek, a station then called Skookumville. In a scenario that matched
suspense movies of the Clark Gable-Spencer Tracy era, an engineer named
E.S. "Skookum" Smith convinced the crews that the track must reach the
western terminus during the time limitation set by the US government.
The future of the Puget Sound rested with them! The last spike was driven
at 3 p.m. on December 16, 1873. The first train arrived at the prearranged
point for the celebration just after 24 hours before the expiration
of the charter.
http://www.lakewood-wa.com/history.htm
Tacoma Golf and Country Club 1894
Alexander Baillie, a young Scotsman assigned to Tacoma
by the Balfour-Guthrie Co., along with 30 office mates (half Scots)
grew homesick and decided to build a golf course, Tacoma Golf Club,
completed in 1894 on 280 acres outside Edison, WA, leased for $1 a year
from the Eisenbeis family, who served as caretakers and lived on the
property. The club relocated to American Lake in 1904. A spur line of
the Tacoma Railroad and Power Line reached the club in 1906. Charles
Evans Jr. played an exhibition there in 1912, and the Vardon-Ray exhibition
was played there in 1911 before a crowd of 1,000.
http://turf.lib.msu.edu/1950s/1953/530417.pdf
The Tacoma Country and Golf Club was established in 1894
to further attract the rich and famous. The first golf club west of
the Mississippi, it featured trolley transportation from Tacoma to the
playground on the Prairie. In the early 1900's, the famed Tacoma Speedway
was built around what is now the Lakewood Industrial Park. The mile-long
wooden track circled the open prairie and drew racing greats, such as
Barney Oldfield, Louis Chevrolet and Eddie Rickenbacker. A grandstand
was built along Steilacoom Boulevard, about where Clover Park Technical
College is today. During the Roaring 20's, summer residents began to
expand their lake cottages into year-round homes. Airplanes found that
the inner grasslands of the racetrack made a fine landing field in the
post World War I years. Eventually, the airstrip was improved and hangars
were built as part of the Mueller-Harkins Airport. The City of Tacoma
used the airstrip as its commercial field for a time, and national air
shows were held at the site until World War II.
http://www.lakewood-wa.com/history.htm
N.
Grand Rapids & Indiana Ry
Grand Hotel, Mackinac Island, Lake Huron, Michigan
In 1886, the New York Central Railroad, Grand Rapids and
Indiana Railroad, and Detroit and Cleveland Steamship Navigation Company
formed the Mackinac Island Hotel Company. The group purchased the land
on which the hotel was built and construction began, based upon the
design by Detroit architects Mason and Rice. When it opened the following
year, the hotel was advertised to Chicago, Erie, Montreal and Detroit
residents as a summer retreat for vacationers who arrived by lake steamer
and by rail from across the continent. At its opening, nightly rates
at the hotel ranged from US$3 to US$5 a night.
Grand
Hotel, Mackinac Island, Wikipedia
Mackinac & the Victorian Era In the 1880s and 1890s Mackinac
changed greatly. Business investment by large railroad companies and
personal wealth led to the construction of opulent Victorian summer
homes. Three transportation companies joined forces with hotelier John
Oliver Plank and with Charles Caskey, a local cottage builder with an
amazing reputation for quick construction, and built the Grand Hotel
in less than four months. Meat packers, lumbermen, and railroad barons
constructed elegant ÒcottagesÓ on MackinacÕs West Bluff, East Bluff,
and Annex areas. The traveling public also enjoyed MackinacÕs great
offerings. Local carriage drivers were hired to take visitors on sightseeing
excursions, entertaining them with stories about Indian legends and
local history. By 1880, twelve carriage licenses were issued, and by
1896, a representative of the local carriage drivers, Thomas Chambers,
petitioned the Village of Mackinac Island to ban the Òhorseless carriagesÓ
or automobiles because they startled the horses. Growing concerns for
public health and safety in the 1920s led to regulatory systems which
remain in effect today to restrict motor vehicles, excluding emergency
vehicles in both the State Park and the City of Mackinac Island. The
local carriage drivers formed the CarriagemenÕs Association in the mid-1920s
and by 1947 formed todayÕs Mackinac Island Carriage Tours, Inc.(www.mict.com).
Mackinac
Island - History
In the 1890's wealthy Midwestern industrialists who wanted
to spent more than a few nights on Mackinac built their own summer cottages
on the east and west bluffs. Soon a social life including tennis, hiking,
bicycling, examining the local natural wonders, and at the turn of the
century, golf at on the new Wawashkamo Golf Course.
Mackinac
Island - Victorian Era History
Mackinac Island's tourist trade exploded in 1887. Two
railroad companies, the Michigan Central Railroad and the Grand Rapids
and Indiana Railroad, and a steamship company, The Detroit and Cleveland
Navigation Co., needed to create an exotic vacation spot to fill their
trains and ships. They chipped in to to build the Grand Hotel, modeled
after ``grand hotels'' opening in Paris, Cannes, Lucerne, Venice, London
and San Francisco. The hotel itself is an architectural tour de force.
The builder, Charles Caskey, opened his own timber mill in Canada, cut
and prepared the logs, and hauled them across the ice in the winter
of 1886 and 1887. In the spring, he shipped in 300 workers, all the
windows, finishing wood and tools. They built the magnificent hotel
in just three months. The Grand Hotel has windows of French plate glass
with wood trim. Floors are made of inlaid wood. Woodwork is finished
in oil. The dining room is 213 feet long, 70 feet wide, with 27-foot
ceilings. The gardens overflow with geraniums, the Grand Hotel's trademark.
To this day, the Grand Hotel boasts the world's longest covered porch.
Soon after the Grand Hotel opened, The Chicago Sunday Herald began to
provide readers with lists of prominent Chicagoans registered there.
The handful of permanent residents, who had made their money in the
fur trade, began to make cash in the summer escorting tourists on horse-drawn
buggies. Great Lakes steamships from as far away as Montreal brought
tourists to the island. Grand Hotel guests rented bicycles and pedaled
an eight-mile loop around the island, looking over magnificent vistas
of the Lake Michigan and Lake Huron. The Grand Hotel made tourism an
essential element of the island's economy. The new hotel created such
a huge demand for summer workers that hundreds were imported from as
far away as Jamaica. Other tourist-related business sprang up. Elegant
hotels and bed-and-breakfasts line curving, lilac-lined roads. From
spring to fall, Mackinac Island's streets teem with the crews of sailboats
whose masts bristle in the harbor. The Grand Hotel has been host to
many celebrities, including presidents Clinton, Bush, Ford, Kennedy
and Truman.
Greg
Raver-Lampman, Mackinac Island, Virginian-Pilot, Norfolk VA, Sunday,
August 18, 1996.
Detroit and Cleveland Navigation Company, Common
Stock Certificate ca. 1932, with steamship vignette.
General Offices ca.1890
City of Cleveland 1908
llustration from History of Detroit and Wayne County and
Early Michigan: A Chronological Cyclopedia of the Past and Present (Detroit:
Silas Farmer & Co., 1890) 3rd edition. Maritime
Images of the Great Lakes.
Wawashkamo Golf Club, 1898
Wawshkamo
Golf Club History
This early American course and clubhouse was built on
the grounds where American and British forces fought in the War of 1812.
Designed after the famous Scottish links, the course was constructed
in 1901 on land rented from John Early, an Island farmer. The course,
open to the public, is one of the oldest in Michigan.
Makinac
Island - Golf History
Michael Cudahy Stonecliff Mansion (1904), West Bluffs,
Mackinac Island, from his meat packing and California real estate dealings.
Stonecliff Interior
Stonecliff
History
O.
Illinois Central Ry
1892
Chicago area Interurban train.
Interurban train interior.
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