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Talamore Country Club - Club
History
James W. Hilty
The land eternally attracts and
fascinates. Our desire to live in harmony with
nature and our attachment to the land as a source of
livelihood and pleasure leads us naturally to wonder
how things around us came to be and how we came to
this place and time.
The intriguing history of Talamore Country Club is
marked by the often unpredictable, frequently timely
conjunction of circumstance and chance, vision and
planning. Talamore's complex and meandering history
is a tale of grand expectations and dashed hopes,
brilliant schemes and crushing realities, fulfilled
aspirations and a buoyant future. Historical
currents touching Talamore's past leave the land's
latest caretakers living, working, and playing in
history's wake, mindful of the past but optimistic
about the future.
Like all histories, this one is intended to help us
better understand today and anticipate tomorrow.
Exploring Talamore's past allows us to learn
something of the people who shaped the land,
invested fortunes in its development, and, for the
most, left a positive legacy. We will learn, too,
about how the land itself has journeyed from Indian
wilderness to farming community, from a grand
country estate to a playground for the rich, and,
more recently, from the site of one of America's
earliest golf clubs to a modern golf course and
award winning planned residential community. Along
the way that journey incurred numerous twists and
turns, several curious side roads, an occasional cul
de sac, but never a dead end.
Talamore's history touches some of the minor
pathways of European and American history, manifests
many of the major developments in the game of golf
over the last century, and testifies to the virtues
of foresight, patience, and good fortune in modern
real estate development and golf course design. It
is a history not without memorable eccentrics, an
odd and sensationalist moment or two, even a touch
of scandal. Like the game of golf itself, however,
Talamore's history remains something of an enigma,
parts of which are yet to be fully known or
revealed.
What follows, then, is a look back at what can be
known of the critical events shaping the
circumstances that brought us to where we are today,
early in the twenty-first century -- four hundred
years since European settlers and William Penn's
agents first walked the land, nearly three hundred
years since Rowland Hugh build the first house
nearby, over one hundred years since Henry Pratt
McKean first developed the property and architect
Horace Trumbauer added graceful touches, eighty-two
years since Joseph H. Fretz first placed a country
club on the property and the famed Alexander Findlay
designed the first golf course, forty-four years
since Sam Snead trod the old Oak Terrace links in a
memorable exhibition, a quarter of a century since
Elmer F. "Bud" Hansen first envisioned a residential
golf community on the site, a dozen years since
Realen Homes constructed the first houses and named
the development Talamore (Scottish for "land of fair
value"), and ten years since Bob Levy, Jr. presided
over the grand opening of his splendid testament to
golf's modern era, Talamore Country Club.
Chapters
I. Earliest History
II. Pine Run Farms - The McKean Estate
III. McKean Manor House - Pine Ridge
IV. Horace Trumbauer and Talamore Country Club
V. Scandal and the Declension of the McKeans
VI. Pine Run Country Club and Alexander Findlay
-- Brushing Against Golf Immortality
VII. Bankers' and the Great Depression.
VIII. Oak Terrace Country Club - The Wingel Years
IX. The “Old Oak”.
X. “Slammin' Sammy” Snead Comes to Oak Terrace.
XI. Location, Location, Location
XII. Oak Terrace Country Club - The “Bud” Hansen
Years.
XIII. Talamore Country Club - Realen and Bob Levy,
Jr.
XIV. Talamore Country Club: The making of a golf
course
XV. The switchover, 1993-1995:
XVI. THE END OF THE BEGINNING |
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