Flagstaff today has several 18-hole golf courses tucked into the forest, with rolling hills, pine and oak, creeks along the fairways and views of the Peaks. The town's first course was a stranger, scrappier thing. Nine holes, dirt fairways, greens made of cottonseed oil. This is the story of the original Flagstaff Country Club, which opened in 1925 four miles north of town, and of the sad chapter that later attached itself to the place.
How Flagstaff got its first golf course
While researching Flagstaff's Walkup family murders for my book, I came across old newspaper articles on the town's search for land suitable for a golf course. A committee of influential men was given the job, and they reached out to Tim Riordan for help. Riordan had designed a three-hole course on his own property, each hole with three different approaches, so he knew the terrain and the game. Several sites were considered, but Riordan convinced the group that a parcel four miles north of town, just east of the old reservoir, was perfect. The land was obtained in early 1925, the course was designed, and the Flagstaff Country Club opened for play that summer.
Dirt fairways and cottonseed greens
The course was an immediate success. It ran nine holes with a wicked dogleg challenge near the end. The fairways were hard-packed dirt that needed regular mowing to stay playable, and the "greens" were actually cottonseed oil ovals that golfers or their caddies would roll flat after putting. The clubhouse came six or seven years later, beautifully designed with a restaurant, bar and a large dance floor. Visitors who summered in Flagstaff praised the course for its odd style and its views, and I have talked with a few people who played there as late as the 1960s and 70s.
The country club and the Walkup tragedy
The course holds a darker place in Flagstaff history too. In the summer of 1937, Marie Walkup took the lives of her four children and then her own, and the country club grounds are where her story ended. That case gripped me so completely that I wrote a whole book about it, The Walkup Family Murders, published by The History Press. It remains the most haunting story I have ever researched, and the reason this quiet stretch of land north of town still gives some locals pause.
Walk this story
The Walkup story is one of the anchors of the Flagstaff Haunted History Tour, our original ghost walk through downtown, nightly at 7 PM with an extra 8 PM departure Fridays and Saturdays, 75 minutes, $29 for adults. The newspaper articles tell you what happened. The rest of that story gets told on the tour.
Keep reading
