Shawnee Golf Club
The Shawnee Golf Club has a long history dating back to 1910. Originally known as the Elm Ridge Golf and Country Club, it was Johnson County's first golf course. Transplanted Scots gave golf its first start in the Kansas City area in 1894. Golfers crossed the state line when two developers, F.W. Scott of Kansas City and Ann Amelia Parker of Atchinson, filed their plans with Register of Deeds office in Olathe. Their February 12, 1910, application called for a Shawnee housing development and golf course named "Elmridge."
In the late spring of 1910, the nine-hole sand greens course opened. The following year the course was enlarged when a group of members purchased additional land. By the end of the 1914 season, financial distress forced the club to close. On August 22, 1915, the Kansas City Journal announced the reopening of the 18-hole course west of Shawnee under the new name of Shawnee Heights Golf and Country Club. The article also described the fine rock road leading to Shawnee and the recently completed dirt road connecting to the golf club.
Despite efforts to attract golfers by rebuilding the stone club house in 1925, problems plaged the club. By 1927, the Kansas City Journal flashed warnings that this most famous golf course was to become only a memory because of the impassable roads to the site. Golf pro Henry Decker had created an attractive course, but too many miles of chuckholed road closed the club down again.
From 1927 until 1933, the course was owned provately by Thad L. Hoffman, president of the Flour Mills of America. After Hoffman's death on December 20, 1933, the property stood idle until it was leased to the National Youth Administration for a girls' camp.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt created educational and work opportunities for unemployed youth, mainly girls, through the National Youth Administration. The Kansas branch of the program began in September 1935 and was located on the former Shawnee Golf Club grounds. The camp offered training in home management, crafts, waitressing and psychology.
By 1941, the land was sold to a cattle farmer. Elon J. Dekight operated the farm until 1953, when he sold the land to W.S. and Mildred Patton. The land turned hands gain in 1954, when it was sold to the newly-formed Tomahawk Hills Country Club. Johnson County Parks and Recreation bought the course in 1973.
Linda Cohn, an intern from the University of Missouri-Kansas City, prepared this article.
--ALBUM vol. 8, no. 2 (spring 1995)