The story of the Foxburg Country Club begins in 1785, when Philadelphian Samuel Mickle Fox (1763-1808) started to acquire holdings in the frontier of western Pennsylvania. He amassed more than 100,000 acres, including a 1,100-acre tract of land on the Allegheny River, at the confluence of the Allegheny and the Clarion Rivers. This tract eventually included the community of Foxburg and contains the nominated property. On a promontory overlooking the Allegheny River, the Fox family erected a substantial summer home, locally known as the Fox Mansion; this property is about one mile south of the golf course and well outside the nominated area.
Two generations later, in 1880, Samuel Mickel Fox's grandson, Joseph Mickle Fox (1853-1918), was living in Philadelphia after graduating from Haverford College and admission to the Philadelphia Bar. Fox did not engage in law practice but managed the family's extensive investments. Upon the premature death of his older brother, William Logan Fox (1851-1880), at less than thirty years of age, Joseph Fox, himself in his twenties, assumed complete control over the family's holdings, including the Fox lands in Western Pennsylvania.
Joseph Mickle Fox was a member of the prestigious Philadelphia-based Merion Cricket Club. In 1884, he traveled to Europe with the All-American Cricket Team for matches in England, Ireland, and Scotland. Fox played on the eleven-man team christened "The Gentle men of Philadelphia." 6 While in Edinburgh, Scotland, Fox traveled to the Royal and Ancient Golf Course at St. Andrews, the acknowledged international home of golf, to observe the game being played. "Old" Tom Morris (1821-1898), the legendary golf professional at St. Andrews, provided the young Fox with instruction, sold him clubs and primitive gutta-percha balls, all of which returned with Fox when he came home to America.
Joseph Mickle Fox brought his golf equipment westward to the Fox Mansion and laid out a rudimentary eight-hole course on the lawns. He likely played with business associates and members of his family--the game was far from the comparatively egalitarian sport known today. The identity of Fox's first playing Panners is not known, but enthusiasm developed for the new game, and by the summer of 1887, the Fox lawns were too small to meet the needs of the new golf enthusiasts. Fox proposed that a course be laid out on nearby family land and the game be made available to the community.
A five-hole course was laid out on a tract along the Petersburg Road (now State Route 58) corresponding to the nominated tract. In Colonial and Revolutionary Families of Pennsylvania, John W. Jordan noted that Joseph Mickle Fox's accomplishments were "the making of an excellent golf course near the village of Foxburg, which proved a great attraction to the neighborhood."
In 1888, the course was expanded to its present nine-hole configuration, which Fox himself likely laid out; early in the twentieth century, nine additional holes were built south of present-day Route 58. It is unknown when the extra nine holes were abandoned, but play on the "new" nine holes was suspended due to the maintenance cost, which would have increased the annual dues. The land containing the "new" nine holes was sold, and the Allegheny-Clarion Valley High School was eventually erected on the site.
The game of golf has been played here every season since 1887. Since the addition of the last four holes in 1888, landscape changes have been minimal and in no way diminish the significance of Fox's pioneer golf course. 1887, the Foxburg Golf Club was formally organized, and officers were elected. Joseph Mickle Fox became president, and Harry R. Harvey was named secretary-treasurer. Harvey Road, located along the west perimeter of the course, bears his name. Harvey remained in that position for the next sixty-odd years and, late in life, recalled that there had been little need to keep minutes of the early meetings of the executive officers since the officers never changed.
Annual dues were $1.00. Some of Fox's Philadelphia friends became members, along with business and community leaders from the surrounding area, including H.J. Crawford, of Emlenton, the founder of the Quaker State Oil Company. Record-keeping of any sort has been sparse throughout the history of the course, preventing any dependable analysis of membership trends; present-day membership is approximately 150
The popularity of golf in rural western Pennsylvania was significantly boosted by the discovery of oil in the Foxburg environs late in the nineteenth century. The village of Emlenton, three miles to the north, was reputed for many years to have been the wealthiest community per capita in the world, having seven millionaires in a population of 1,400. Oil was so much a part of the environment that several oil storage tanks dotted the golf course during the oil boom years, and the oil fortunes in Emlenton and Foxburg encouraged the stability of the golf course during the early decades of play.
The Club initially leased the land containing the golf course from the Fox family. In 1924, several years after Joseph Mickle Fox's death, the Club purchased the property from the family. It has remained in the organization's ownership since then.
In 1951, Mr. and Mrs. Marcellin G. Adams compiled a manuscript entitled "The Story of the Foxburg Country Club." They recorded that in the early days, the name of the course was changed to the Clarion County Golf Club. Still, when it was realized that, in addition to Clarion, members were drawn from the counties of Armstrong and Butler, "it was decided that it would be more diplomatic to name the inter-county organization for the place where the course was located. From that time on, it has been the Foxburg Country Club."
James Tonks recalled one practice that was not included in the Adamses' history: Sunday morning play was prohibited for a short time, perhaps only spanning two years. The first greens were of sand, and long poles with burlap bags tied to one end were used to smooth the greens after each group had completed play—empty cans served as cups. The fairways were tended by "Old John" Dunkle, who mowed them with a scythe and was paid $ 15.00 annually. In the Club's earliest days, this was the sole expenditure from the organi zational treasury.
In 1892, the Ladies' Foxburg Country Club was organized with twenty-eight charter members; the initial membership fee was twenty-five cents, and monthly dues were ten cents. The organization's first president was Mrs. Major R. Morgan (1860-1950), the wife of a local banker who initially lived in downtown Foxburg but eventually built a house adjacent to the course. Mrs. Morgan retained the group's presidency for thirty years, and when in her eighties, she wrote a two-page statement affirming the age of the Club and noted, "I never thought that having the oldest golf course was important. It just belonged here and to us."
In 1900, a small wood clubhouse was erected along the lane (now Harvey Road) leading into the course. Its modest vernacular design was L-shaped and had a hipped roof extending from the building to shield a porch and provide shelter for golfers during inclement weather. James Tonks recalled that Saturday afternoon picnics were held around this first clubhouse for years. Long serving tables would be set up end-to-end, and "Harry Harvey would come out with a megaphone and holler that supper was ready and everybody would come in and eat." It remained in use until 1942, when it was razed after the Club acquired the present clubhouse.
During the second and third decades of the twentieth century, sixteen homes, some seasonal and others year-round, were erected along the western periphery of the golf course. Built of log and stone construction in the Craftsman and Rustic Adirondack styles, these pictur esque homes lay along the lane that would eventually bear the name of club charter member H. R. Harvey, who served on the Club's board of directors for more than a half-century. The homes were built both for local owners and those from other areas. Among these was the summer home of Pittsburgh attorney Robert W. Grange, Jr., who engaged the prominent New York City firm of Goldwin Starrett and VanVleck to design his 1912 summer home. After he died in 1941, the Foxburg Country Club purchased the Grange house for $5,000 and converted it into a clubhouse, which retains its purpose.
Throughout the balance of the period of significance and continuing to the present, golf has been played every season at Foxburg by young and old alike, including local high school golf teams for whom Foxburg is their home course. The course has always been "semi-private," indicating that non-members may also pay greens fees to play while memberships are sold.
In 1965, the American Golf Hall of Fame was organized at the Foxburg course, and a museum containing a variety of golf memorabilia from the eighteenth century to the present was dedicated on the second story of the clubhouse. The American Golf Hall of Fame Association is separate from the Foxburg Country Club. Still, the groups have shared many members over the years, and the Association is a rent-free occupant of the clubhouse.
On August 2, 1965, the Congress of the United States passed Resolution No. 497, attested by House Speaker John W. McCormick: "Resolved that the House of Representatives extends its greetings and felicitations to the American Golf Hall of Fame located in Foxburg, Pennsylvania, at the oldest golf course in continuous use in the United States, on the occasion of the first Hall of Fame awards to be made on August 29, 1965." Radio and television legend Lowell Thomas chaired the selection committee, which chose for the first inductees famed golf course architect Robert Trent Jones and Lew Worsham, the club professional at Pittsburgh's Oakmont Country Club and a former U.S. Open champion, both of whom were present for the festivities. Golf legends Francis Ouimet, Harry Vardon, J. H. Taylor, James Braid, "Chick'' Evans, Walter Hagen, Robert Tyre "Bobby" Jones, Jr., Henry Cotton, Joyce Weathered, Gene Sarazen, Tommy Armour, Byron Nelson, Ben Hogan, Sam Snead, and Mildred "Babe" Didrickson Zaharias were induced into the Hall of Fame in absentia and in some cases, posthumously.
Spirited discussion has occurred over the decades among some historians regarding the validity of Foxburg's claim to have been the first golf course in the United States. The Scottish American Newsletter responded 1994, "Clyde M. Clark of Bradenton, FL, called the PGA [Professional Golfers Association], who did not want to get into the debate. However, they also indicated that Foxburg was the first golf course and that St. Andrews golf course in Yonkers, NY is the sec ond, starred in 1888." The 2001 United States Golf Association Media Guide notes that "golf was played in 1884 at Oakhurst, West Virginia, at the Dorset Field Club in 1886, and in Foxburg, Pennsylvania in 1887." The other courses are not extant.
In 1968, the 90ᵗʰ U.S. Congress passed House Concurrent Resolution No. 822, stat ing, "Whereas golf has been played at the Foxburg Country Club of Foxburg Pennsylvania, each year since 1887; now therefore it be resolved by the House of Representatives (the Senate concurring), that Congress hereby recognizes that thegolf course of the Foxburg Country Club of Foxburg, Pennsylvania, is the oldest golf course in continuous use in the United States."
Primary source accounts and affidavits gathered in the 1940s and 1950s from elderly original players and in possession of the Foxburg Country Club affirm that golf was indeed played in Foxburg in 1884, when Joseph Mickle Fox brought the game back from Scotland to the lawns of the Fox Mansion, and continuously from 1887 to the present on the course which Fox gave to the community. The significance of Foxburg Country Club lies in the fact that these sworn statements and the overwhelming body of local historical information confirm that the game has been played continuously on the same site since 1887.