09/26/2026
Pinehurst was not supposed to be about golf. 🌲
In June 1895, a Boston soda fountain magnate named James Walker Tufts toured the Sandhills of Moore County and learned he could buy land there for a dollar an acre. He was troubled that most working people in New England could not afford long winter trips south for their health, and he wanted a place where they could rest and recover on a small income. Landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted drew up plans for a village. Crews planted the first of some 222,000 trees and shrubs. Locals called the new place Tuftown before the name Pinehurst stuck. Tufts described the whole project as "semiphilanthropic."
Then Tufts noticed how fast golf was catching on in America. A nine-hole course went in in 1897. In December 1900 he brought in a well-known Scottish golfer, Donald J. Ross, to take charge of everything having to do with the game. Ross stayed at Pinehurst until his death in 1948, and his Pinehurst No. 2 course was completed in 1907. ⛳
The health retreat for ordinary New Englanders became one of the major winter resorts in the United States, and Pinehurst and golf have been close to the same word ever since. Tufts did not live to see how far it went. He died in February 1902, in his apartment at the Carolina Hotel in the village he had started. 🏌️
Have you ever played Pinehurst, or is it still on the someday list?
