The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
LOST LINKS UNEARTHED
Westfield once home to 1900-era Highland, Arawana golf courses
MIDDLETOWN — The remnants of an old golf course lie in a forest where white pines groan against one another in the wind along a sun-dappled trail in the Westfield part of the city.
The former 120-acre, 18hole Highland Country Club Golf Course, which existed from 1910 to 1940, can be found off Atkins Street and Footit Road in the woods marked by the Connecticut Forest and Parks blue hiking trail.
On one side of Atkins was the clubhouse, the former Wilcox Homestead, and on the other, 16 of the 18 holes. The remaining holes sat north of Footit Road.
On Nov. 24, 1914, the clubhouse burned to the ground, a tragedy covered in area newspapers and at least one national golf publication.
“When we arrived, we found flames raging in the attic, saw the building was doomed,” according to the Meriden municipal register.
Photos from the time show the charred wreck of the homestead.
“Servants and near neighbors did all they could at the beginning of the fire, with buckets and pails, but when they saw the place was doomed, they turned and carried from the building all that was possible in the way of furnishings,” read a story in American Golfer.
The structure was built in 1883 as a summer hotel.
“A lot of things burned down in the 1900s, so it was rebuilt in 1915,” said golf expert Kevin Grobsky, who has researched the history of golf in Meriden.
Author Anthony Pioppi, of Middletown, who has written five books about the sport, this week walked along the perimeter of the former course, now buried in the trails among the city’s Wilcox Woods Lamentation Mountain Conservation Area.
“For me, it’s like diving on a shipwreck,” Pioppi said. “It’s there, you can go see it. People used to play here all the time and now we’re standing in the middle of the woods.”
The 17th hole can be viewed in the tree-populated area off Footit, with other portions situated along Old Mill and Fisher roads. Stone walls that bordered the Highland property can be viewed in the backyards of homes on Old Farms West.
It was the fifth 18-hole course when it opened, according to a RecordJournal article from the 1980s.
The homestead was described as “the magnificent three-storied structure with verandas” in a RecordJournal article. The new clubhouse, built after the fire, was recalled as “a grand Mt. Vernon-like building.”
A photo from that era shows 11 teen boys in white shirts and ties who caddied for the club and were paid $1 a bag, $2 for doubles.
“You didn’t have to know the course like now, when they ask, ‘What is this putt going to do? Break right or to the left?’ They didn’t ask because, what the heck, you were only a caddie!” said Bernard “Bucky” Bucholz of Meriden, a starter and ranger at Hunter Golf Club, interviewed by the RecordJournal at 74.
A walk of the parcel reveals, concrete steps lying askew, tees and greens — all covered by leaves among the forest of white pine trees planted after the course closed because of their tendency to grow quickly, Pioppi said.
The layout rose and fell with the tumbling land, where a prominent ridge bisects the land.
“Back then, [golf courses] were built on the terrain. There were no bulldozers,” said Pioppi as he kicked leaves off two concrete steps near a weathered wooden post he believes once bore a sign marking the entrance.
While working on a small unpublished book on the history of his hometown Hunter Golf Course, Grobsky accumulated photos, memorabilia and photos of Highland during his research. He visited Highland years ago.
“I would go to the site, look around it, take some pictures and see what it looks like today, and see if I could imagine what it looked like in the time it was in vogue,” Grobsky said.
Grobsky took up the sport years ago when he first was dating his now wife, who has since won two Meriden championships.
“I had never played golf before, but I wanted to impress her,” he said.
The couple’s daughter, Katherine Pesko, is an accomplished golfer and boys and girls golf coach at Waterford High School, one of the few female golf coaches in the state, Grobsky said. She has won eight Meriden championships and is “probably one of the most decorated women golfers from Meriden.”
Champion-level exhibitions were played at Highland, too. In 1927, pro golfer and sport legend Gene Sarazen played at Highland, Grobsky said.
A few years back, Pioppi and a friend walked the Highland route and found traces of all 18 holes. Middletown, with all its expansiveness and hundreds of acres of former farmland, is home to a single golf course, Miner Hills, which opened in 1994.
“It’s absolutely stunning,” Pioppi said of the absence of large courses. “With this rich athletic history, the fact that Middletown does not have a full-size, either 9-hole or 18-hole golf course is a crime.”
According to Pioppi, two factors were responsible for Highland’s closure, the onset of World War II and the fact the family that owned the course joined the temperance movement. When that happened, alcohol was no longer served at the course. Golfers chose to play instead at facilities where they could imbibe.
The reason Highland closed in 1940 was “people got involved with the temperance movement and you couldn’t get alcohol at the golf course, so people stopped going,” Pioppi said.
There is another “lost” rudimentary course in Middletown: the Arawana Golf Club near the Godfrey Library on Newfield Street, which existed from 1901-12.
Pioppi said the layout sat on the south side of Westfield Street. The nine-hole layout was 2,210 yards and had hole names such as Long Green, Tiptop and To the Woods.
The photos Grobsky have include golfers in white shorts and shirts, and others taken of workmen clearing the land.
Grobsky also has the old scorecard, which urged golfers to “replace turf” and “please smooth footprints in sand traps.” A course booklet shows playing rates were a bargain compared to today’s prices: 50 cents on weekends, 75 cents on Saturdays and $1 on Sundays and holidays.
In April 1933, Highland declared bankruptcy. It reopened in May 1934 as a semi-public operation, according to the RecordJournal. In the ’80s, it became a state-certified tree farm belonging to the estates of Roy and Horace Wilcox.