THE PIEDMONT
CLUB
THE CLUB AT
CREIGHTON FARMS
DOMINION VALLEY
COUNTRY CLUB
BULL RUN
GOLF CLUB
STONEWALL
GOLF CLUB
EVERGREEN
COUNTRY CLUB
private), The Piedmont Club (Haymarket,
private), Stonewall Golf Club (Gainesville,
public) and Robert Trent Jones Golf Club
(Gainesville, private).
AIDAN BRADLEY
GROWTH AFTER
ADVENTUROUS BEGINNINGS
T
wenty-five years ago, the ground which
many of these destinations now occupy was
rich farmland or acres of pristine woods.
Westpark and Evergreen were the only
courses along the Route 15 corridor, with
both opening for business in the late 1960s.
The remaining eight are relatively new to the
scene, most of them sprouting up since the
mid-1990s to coincide in some cases with the
spreading suburban sprawl way west of the
Washington Beltway.
“We opened in 1968,” says Chris Hall,
the longtime head PGA professional at
Evergreen, nestled beneath scenic Bull Run
Mountain in the Blue Ridge foothills. “When
the Disney project fell through, there was
a lot of farmland available at pretty good
prices, and a lot of developers took advantage
of it. We were pretty much alone for a while,
but not anymore.”
Ah, Disney. The Mouse that roared
through Anaheim, Calif., and then Orlando,
Fla., with nationally popular theme parks
was prepared to do the same with a historybased venue planned on 3,000 acres in
the Gainesville/Haymarket area hard by
Interstate 66. Disney had gone so far as
to secretly purchase large swaths of land
in the area, only to face a firestorm of
criticism and protest by extremely proactive and well-organized preservationists,
environmentalists, historians and civic
groups who waged a fierce campaign to
discourage the project less than five miles
away from the historic Manassas battlefield.
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Nick
Kotz and former Los Angeles Times reporter
Rudy Abramson later combined to chronicle
the entire episode for Washington’s Cosmos
Club Journal.
“In short,” they wrote, “Haymarket
would have become the core of a new
w w w. v s g a . o r g
Master_VSGA_Sept13_MASTER2.indd 19
ROBERT TRENT
JONES GOLF CLUB
THE REGENCY AT
DOMINION VALLEY
urban center outstripping Capital Beltway
complexes such as Tyson's Corner, where––
in only a decade––a country crossroads had
been transformed into a prototypical edge
city of malls, traffic jams, high-rise offices
and apartments, car dealerships, and fastfood outlets. It was because of the region’s
extraordinary concentration of historic sites
that so many Americans found this prospect
so appalling. They were disturbed by the
very thought of battlefields, old homes,
churches, country stores, stone fences, and
scenic byways being obscured and overrun
by neon and franchises.”
Faced with such passionate and obstinate
opposition that became a national public
relations nightmare for a company so
deeply concerned about its squeaky-clean
image, Disney finally pulled the plug on
the project. That decision also came much
to the dismay of many local and state
politicians, convinced it would bring a
windfall in tax revenues for growing Prince
William County, as well as developers
eager to cash in on Disney’s mouse tails.
As it turned out, Disney’s nightmare
turned into a dream scenario, at least for
developers…and golfers. The two courses
at Dominion Valley, as well as Piedmont,
Stonewall and Robert Trent Jones, all were
built on or very close to the original Disney
footprint. All but RTJ were advertised as
big-time amenities to high density, highend housing communities. During this time,
the plan was to meet the needs of an evergrowing population looking to move within
commuting distance of the nation’s capital,
at more affordable prices and closer to wide
open spaces even further west of the city.
“If you look at a Google image from a
satellite, there’s obviously a lot of golf on
this corridor,” says Tim Freeland, the head
professional at Raspberry Falls. “There are
a lot of (housing) developments. The land is
cheaper as opposed to inside the beltway, but
you still have access to major thoroughfares.
Even though we’re all pretty far out (from
D.C.), it’s pretty easy to get to, to live and to
play golf.”
BUSTLING BUSINESS
Indeed, at the northern end of the trail, the
Dulles T Road and Greenway intersect
oll
with Route 15. At the southern end there is
Interstate 66 and Route 29. And in the middle,
Route 50 is another east-west corridor. The
public courses all say they get plenty of play
from golfers travelling west from the closerin suburbs, and the private courses all have
many members from the same areas.
Players are met with immaculate
conditions and high shot values at
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