And, of course, that Flynn golf course.
“This is the golden nugget of the region,”
Zimmerman insists. “It truly is in all respects.”
As it’s been since its inception, well before an
18-hole golf course was placed into evidence.
The year was 1896, and Harrisburg was bustling. Industry and commerce flourished. The
population had reached 50,000.
Yet…
There was no real place for the town’s
movers and shakers to rub elbows and play
outdoors. So, they moved and they shook,
and though the legal notice that 15 of them
placed in the Harrisburg Telegraph that May
that was relegated to the bottom of the
page above an ad for Sheffer’s Book Store,
its import resonates across 12 decades. It
announced its application for a charter to
form a club, “the purpose of which is the
maintenance of facilities for athletic sports for
innocent amusement.”
Tennis was the engine driving the endeavor,
with baseball, bowling, croquet and shuffle-
board close behind, when the club’s original
six-acre facility two miles north of the city
opened in 1897. Golf debuted a year later –
on an abbreviated six-hole circuit laid out by
future club president Dr. William Wright. When
the young club took out a lease on an addi-
tional 10 acres in 1900, Wright added three
new holes, stretching Harrisburg’s first nine to
a sporty 2,462 yards.
From the start, the club cast its spell on
Pennsylvania politicians. Its first president,
founding member Marlin Olmsted, was a
congressman. An All-American quarterback at
Yale University and newspaper owner, Vance
McCormick, the city’s mayor from 1902-05,
was also a founding member, the club’s third
president and chairman of the Democratic National Committee. In 1914, he ran for governor
to replace fellow club member John Tener, a
former major league ballplayer and congressman, who was stepping down; serving
simultaneously as president of the National
League, Tener decided he preferred his first
T
From the start, the club cast its spell on Pennsylvania
politicians. Its first president was a congressman.
Governor Tener
