The professional golf season has started, even though as I write this, large swaths of the United States are under severe winter storm warnings. In Las Cruces, we’ve been getting rain since last Friday and have now received more than one and two-thirds inches — a rare event for our high desert climate. The Organ Mountains were frosted with a thin covering of snow this morning, which was gone as soon as the clouds cleared out and the sun burnished the mountains.
Staying indoors is pretty much a given under these conditions, and watching sports on TV, reading a book or cooking something that takes most of the day are some of the best entertainment options to avoid cabin fever. I decided to watch sports and found the American Express golf tournament in La Quinta, CA. It was my best option since I don’t follow a lot of basketball and the two NFL playoff games weren’t until the day after I was writing this.
Watching golf got me to thinking about golf in New Mexico. I decided to see what the oldest golf course was in New Mexico and was surprised by the answer. It is the nine-hole course adjacent to historic The Lodge in Cloudcroft, which opened in 1899.
The Lodge in Cloudcroft was bult by the Alamogordo & Sacramento Mountain Railway, which had built the rail route primarily to haul timber harvested in the Sacramento Mountains to lumber mills in Alamogordo. Timber shipped by train from mountains was used to construct many homes and other buildings in El Paso and southern New Mexico at the turn of the century. The Lodge was apparently an afterthought to the railroad and was constructed as a traditional log cabin building further down the hill from the current building. The golf course was constructed further up the hill at 9,000 feet in the spruce, fir and aspen forest and along two narrow valleys where it still is today. At one time, it was considered to be the highest golf course in the United States. That honor now goes to the Copper Creek Golf Club near Copper Mountain, CO, at 9,800 feet.
The Lodge and railroad were later acquired by the El Paso and Southwestern Railroad, owned by the Phelps Dodge Corporation. But when a fire in 1909 destroyed the original lodge, the railroad initially decided not to rebuild it. A group of investors, including some doctors who saw the cool high and dry mountaintop location as a health benefit for ailing children, urged the railroad to rebuild the lodge. The railroad agreed and offered those interested to buy shares in the rebuilt hotel.
The golf course is unique and challenging. Although not very long, it features significant elevation changes, lots of trees and underbrush off every fairway and includes one hole where you can’t see the green when you tee off.
I’ve played it several times and have lost many a ball in the forests, usually on the right side of the fairway where my terminal slice comes into play. The first hole is pretty dramatic, a par four that you think should be a par three, with the pin a hundred or more feet below the tee box. Even so, the course is fun to play and hard to take seriously, so I just enjoy the unique experience.
Although originally built as a par 9, it becomes a par 18 because two different tee boxes are used for some holes and two different flagged cups are located on other holes.
I looked online about other states’ oldest golf courses. Many of them were started about the same era that the course at The Lodge was built. Wyoming and Nevada were the latest states to open golf course — both in 1917. The oldest course in the United States is Shinnecock Hills in Southampton, New York, where major PGA tournaments are still played.
And after the course at Cloudcroft was built, the next golf course in New Mexico wasn’t constructed until 1914 at the Albuquerque Country Club. I’ve played that course too and it’s flat and pretty boring compared to Cloudcroft. But instead of losing my ball in the forest, I can usually find it on the next fairway to my right, thanks to my predictable slice.
aero-cordero.com 