As stated in previous columns, I’ve been working on a new book about sports in
El Paso and plan to call it “The Good, the Bad and the Funny of El Paso Sports.”
Writing a historical book is no easy task and takes years to finish. Finding
information and getting it straight takes many hours and hours of research. But
it’s also rewarding. I’ve gone back to the 1880s and found so many interesting
and often surprising tidbits that I’ve actually enjoyed much of the sweat it’s
taken.
To make the book more interesting I’m writing it in anecdotal style with each
part having its own heading. Since the golf season is underway, I thought I’d share with you a couple of
items in the book about how the sport started in El Paso. I hope to share more
stories and history about golf in future columns.
El Paso had a golf course before paved streets. San Jacinto Plaza, built in 1903, was the first park in El Paso but not far
behind was Washington Park, which became the center of various sports
activities. It was not unusual to see baseballs and golf balls flying through
the air at the same time there.
Golf balls? Yes. Golf was already so popular throughout the country that El Paso
had a golf course before a paved street. Eleven prominent El Pasoans, led by
businessman Carl Beers, decided to build a nine-hole golf course right next to
Washington Park where the El Paso Zoo now exists. It was called El Paso Country
Club and the clubhouse, a modest building but with a kitchen and porch, opened
on June 1, 1906. El Paso wasn’t to have its first paved street until September
of that year.
The late Agatha Lee, who was to dominate women’s golf in El Paso for decades and
lived to be 99 years old, remembered practicing there with her husband, Carroll
D. Lee. “There were usually some baseball games going on,” Mrs. Lee said. “We
would hit balls over the heads of the players with three irons.”
Several years later the course moved to near Fort Bliss. However, when the
clubhouse there was destroyed by fire in 1918 prominent El Paso business and
civic leader Zachariah "Zach" White donated 137 acres to build a clubhouse and
18-hole golf course in the upper valley. The course and clubhouse opened at
their present location in 1921. – Sources: Parks and Recreation records, El Paso
Country Club records and “El Paso’s Greatest Sports Heroes” book by Ray Sanchez.
“Scandals,” other news at golf course.
In an interview with reporter Marshall Hail of the El Paso Herald-Post, the late
Carl Beers reported there were two “scandals” at El Paso Country Club near
Washington Park in its early years.
The first one was a lady member who showed up at the clubhouse “wearing the
first slit skirt ever seen by the town’s early ‘sophisticates.’” The second was
that “another equally daring lady was seen smoking a cigarette in full view of
other club members.”
Beers, vice-president of Mortgage Investment Co. and one of the leading charter
members, was the first club champion. In the interview Beers recalled the greens
were made of sand and there was no grass on the fairways. Club members’
transportation to the course was by streetcar, horse and buggy or horseback.
Some of the food for the little clubhouse restaurant was provided by one of the
attendants, who was a good shot, hunted along the Rio Grande river and kept the
club supplied with quail and ducks. – Source: El Paso Herald-Post files.
THAT’S JUST a taste of what’s to come. Hope you enjoy it. Future column:
Professional golf comes to El Paso.
Veteran sports journalist and author Ray Sanchez welcomes suggestions for his
column.
20 Jun
