WSGA and PNGA purchase golf course from the Weyerhaeuser Company
The Washington State Golf Association (WSGA) and Pacific Northwest Golf Association
(PNGA), along with the Weyerhaeuser Company announced today that the golf associations
have acquired the new golf course facility in Dupont, Wash.
The newly constructed course will be named “The Home Course” and is slated to open for public play on Friday, June 29. It boasts five sets of tees ranging from the forward tees at 5,506 yards, to middle tees at 6,139 yards, and back tees of a whopping 7,437 yards. The golf course is very walkable and was constructed by Weyerhaeuser with state-of-the-art-drainage technology to be playable year round. Panoramic views of Puget Sound, the Olympics and Mount Rainier are present throughout the golf course. Green fee rates will be in the $35-$45 range during the peak summer season. Starting time reservations will be accepted beginning at 12:00 noon on Wednesday, June 6 by telephoning toll-free 866-964-0520 or locally at 253-964-0520.
Hole #6 - 209 yards - Par 3
“This is the realization of a longstanding dream of our two associations,” said WSGA and PNGA Executive Director, John Bodenhamer. “The WSGA and PNGA have worked cooperatively for almost two decades to create a permanent home for golf in the Northwest and we are thrilled it is now a reality. We shall be forever grateful to the Weyerhaeuser Company for providing us with the opportunity to develop our vision at this historic and remarkable property.”
The Home Course will eventually house the offices of the WSGA, PNGA, and USGA activities in the Northwest, as well as other allied golf associations. It will be a home for junior golf programs, environmental stewardship and turfgrass research. Each year, The Home Course will also serve as the venue for some WSGA and PNGA championships and United States Golf Association (USGA) national championship sectional qualifiers.
The course was designed by golf course architect Mike Asmundson of Scottsdale, Arizona. Asmundson, a graduate of the University of Washington, has constructed numerous courses in the desert southwest and in South America. He also owns Discovery Bay Golf Course in Port Townsend, Wash.
Hole #2 - 405 yards - Par 4
The property on which The Home Course is located has a long and rich history. Several Native-American tribes, known collectively as the Salish people, inhabited the area for thousands of years. More specifically, it was a center of commerce for the Nisqually Tribe. The first European settlement began in 1833 when the Hudson’s Bay Company established a cabin/storehouse called Nisqually House, at the mouth of the Sequalitchew Creek. Fort Nisqually, a main trading and supply center for early U.S. settlers and local Native Americans, was built by the Hudson Bay Company in 1833. The original 1833 site of the old fort has been preserved today next to the first green of The Home Course. In 1843, the fort was re-located to a site adjacent to what is now Center Drive which runs through the heart of the City of Dupont. A re-creation of the old fort now exists at Point Defiance Park in Tacoma. Interestingly, the PNGA’s initial historical research has indicated that the Hudson’s Bay Company traders laid out a crude six-hole layout around the old fort that may have been the very first golf course in the Northwest in the 1830s.
In 1906, the E.I. du Pont de Nemours Company (today’s DuPont Company) acquired the property and constructed a plant that manufactured explosives. This plant was key to the development of the West. Its black powder and dynamite were used to clear stumps for the railroad’s western expansion and to clear fields for farming the region. Production of explosives continued until the late-1970s when the property was acquired by the Weyerhaeuser Company as part of a larger plan for industrial development in the DuPont area.
Weyerhaeuser and DuPont initiated clean-up discussions with the Washington State Department of Ecology in 1991, and soon thereafter agreed to cleanup remnants of the former manufacturing. The success of the clean up is attributed largely to partnerships the companies forged with the Washington State Department of Ecology, the Washington State Department of Archaeology and Historical Preservation, the Nisqually Tribe, the City of DuPont, the DuPont Historical Society and other stakeholders. Constructing a golf course was part of the environmental remediation process, which concluded last year.
The WSGA was founded in 1922 and is a 501(c)4 non-profit amateur golf association that consists of approximately 83,000 individual members at more than 270 member golf clubs throughout Washington and Northern Idaho.
The PNGA was established in 1899 and is a 501(c)3 charitable amateur golf association with more than 220,000 individual members at approximately 725 member golf clubs throughout Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, British Columbia, and Alberta.
The associations are the state and regional representatives of the USGA and conduct 23 state and regional championships, provide USGA GHIN Handicap and USGA Course and Slope Rating services to WSGA members, interpret the Rules of Golf, administer the Evans Caddie Scholarship Program in the region, publish four different magazines, and much more. Each association is a separate organization, governed by separate boards of directors, each comprised of men and women from golf clubs throughout the region. The WSGA and PNGA are headquartered together and share a common staff of 12 individuals in offices located in Bellevue, Wash. For more information about each organization, please visit their respective web sites at www.thewsga.org or www.thepnga.org or telephone Northwest Golf House at 1-800-643-6410 or (206) 526-1238.
Pictures: High quality images can be downloaded by going to www.golfassets.com, with the following log-in information: Username: pnga Password: password
Images include: Hole #2, 405 yards, Par 4 and Hole #6, 209 yards, Par 3
