Golf at the
Golden Gate

In the spring of 1900 Sausalito had talked about a golf club for two years and had nothing to show for it. The trouble was land. The few level tracts near the town were unsuited to the game, or belonged to owners who, the Sausalito News complained, would sooner pasture cows than lease to sportsmen¹. Over the ridge lay the one stretch of open country everyone wanted. The Fort Baker reservation, the paper wrote, "has often been looked upon with longing eyes by residents in this vicinity as an almost ideal place for golf"¹.

Fort Baker was a young artillery post on Horseshoe Cove, renamed from the old Lime Point reservation in 1897. Its first garrison lived in a pair of wooden barracks barged over from the Presidio and set down at the head of the cove, north of the marsh, and the census of 1900 counted only 41 soldiers there². Behind those barracks a valley ran up between the ridges, and that May the Army agreed to let Sausalito play golf in it¹.

The club brought in a professional to plan the course. The San Francisco Chronicle of 19 May announced that "Stephenson, the well-known professional," would lay out nine holes in "the valley directly behind the barracks at Fort Baker"³. He was David Stephenson, a Scot who had lately been the instructor of the San Francisco Golf Club at the Presidio^4,5. The New York magazine Golf carried his name east that summer: "The course was laid out by David Stephenson. It is a sporty one"⁶.

Two papers printed his routing on the same day. The first five holes went up the valley, with views of the hills, and the four home holes came back toward the water^1,3. On those four, the Chronicle promised, the golfers would face the bay, and "all the Alameda shore, Alcatraz island, Angel island and the city will be spread before them"³. Stephenson also looked ahead. The nine was arranged so that it could easily be made into eighteen holes once the club had grown enough to bear the cost³. It never did, and the links stayed at nine holes.

Stephenson did not stay to see it played. By 26 May the Call reported that he had "recently returned home to Scotland"⁵. The building fell to T. W. M. Draper, a Sausalito engineer whom the town called Colonel, and the work under his supervision began on the Thursday before the News went to press on 19 May¹. The News summed up the division of labor: the links were "planned by Stephenson" and "laid out under the directions of Colonel Draper"⁴. A 1983 history of Sausalito says the golfers designed the course themselves and built all its traps and greens⁷. The papers of 1900 bear out only the second half of that.

The club opened its links on Decoration Day, 30 May 1900, with a luncheon in tents, although the Call admitted that "the nine holes are not yet ready for play"⁸. The Examiner was kinder. It called the nine holes in "the canyon just beyond Fort Baker" a completed course, not a long one, with enough natural hazards and bunkers to keep the members' scores high for some time⁹. The News expected good condition in a month⁴.

The ground had other ideas. By August the local courses were baked hard, and the Call wrote that "nothing can be done toward putting the Sausalito course into order until the ground is well soaked with rain"¹⁰. In October the club was still waiting to begin what the paper called the much-needed work of improving it¹¹. When the first tournament began in November, the Chronicle found thistles spreading over the course¹². The Call found it "very rough," with "some of the putting grounds being terraced on the sides of the hills," and the fairway covered with tussocky grass that gave bad lies^13,14.

The greens were the oddest feature. "The putting greens are not, to speak accurately, 'greens' at all," the Call explained, because the club had found no way to bring the water that turf needed. "They are of clay and sand, rolled smooth and hard"¹⁵. Two days later the same paper thought them rough and uneven¹⁴.

That autumn the Army's building plans forced the green committee to move several holes, as a later section tells. The Call of 1 December 1900 walked its readers round the relaid course, and it is the best account of the links in their first year. The nine took in "all the available space of the canyon between the fortifications and Fort Baker"¹⁵. The first four holes crossed rough but not especially hard ground. The fifth was a hard one, cut by little ravines where a creek branched. The golfer then went on with a steep hill on his right and a gorge on his left, and crossed a ridge with two small blind gulches, against the wind. A drive downhill over another gulch brought him to the seventh. A screen of trees with a narrow opening stood between the seventh and the eighth, and a marshy hazard guarded the green¹⁵.

One photograph of this ground survives. Harper's Official Golf Guide for 1901 printed it over the caption "On the Course, Sausalito (California) Golf Club." Its entry for the club on another page names the man who looked after the clay and the tussocks: "Greenkeeper, Will Stevenson"¹⁶. Nothing more is known of him.

Tents for a Clubhouse

The first clubhouse was canvas. The News promised "large tents" for the ladies and gentlemen at the links, with a croquet ground and two tennis courts to follow¹. The Chronicle placed the courts near the spot where a clubhouse would one day stand³. No report of 1900 found so far shows the courts or the croquet ground being built. The tents were not a choice. "The club has no lease of the ground and will not be permitted to put up any buildings on it," the Call reported. "Tents will be used as dressing rooms and clubroom"⁵. The opening luncheon was served in them⁸.

In October the Army relented. The Call reported that the Sausalito golfers "will be granted the unusual privilege of erecting a clubhouse" on the reservation¹⁸. The Argonaut called it "a temporary club-house," allowed by General Shafter's courtesy¹⁹. The Call later described it as a small clubhouse and said that no such permission had been granted before on a Western military reservation. Even the San Francisco club's handsome house at the Presidio, it noted, stood clear of government ground¹⁵.

Permission was not yet a building. At the end of November the Town Talk reported a Thanksgiving golf dance got up to raise money for the club²⁰. On the first weekend of December the tournament's semifinals were played in the open, and the Call drew the moral:

"A keen northerly wind blew across the links and rendered the lack of a clubhouse severely apparent."

The club ended 1900 without a house. When its two-room building was at last nearly ready, the following May, the Call said the golfers had "hitherto had no place of shelter or rest on the links"²¹. The tents of the opening summer had evidently not lasted.

Guests of the General

Two Sausalito men had opened the gate. A. Starr Keeler, of the First National Bank, was the man who "first agitated the golf question in Sausalito"^22,4. Draper wrote to the Army on behalf of "a number of ladies and gentlemen of Sausalito." The post commander endorsed his letter on 17 April 1900 and sent it up to the Department of California, which General William R. Shafter commanded¹. The reply of 2 May, signed for the general by an assistant adjutant general, gave exactly as much as the Army meant to give:

"the Department Commander has no objection to the request to play golf on the reservation, provided the persons interested are informed and fully understand that this permission confers no rights of occupancy."

Sausalito heard more in it than that. The Call's correspondent wrote that Shafter had "donated" the use of the reservation, and the News called the order "practically a long lease"^23,1. The golfers were in fact guests on government ground, and the News gave the credit for their welcome "largely" to Draper's influence with the general²².

The club took shape quickly. The Chronicle reported it organized by 19 May, with ten charter members, and the Call dated the organizing meeting to the night of 25 May, which was probably a formality^3,5. The council met on Tuesday, 29 May, and chose A. D. Shepard of the Southern Pacific as president, Draper as vice president, Keeler as secretary and H. Clay Miller as treasurer⁴. Draper also chaired the Greens Committee, and Capt. William Borrowe chaired the House Committee⁴. The Army had a seat as well. Lt. Henry C. Clark of the Third Artillery, who commanded Fort Baker and had passed the general's order to Draper, sat on the council and on the Greens Committee^1,4. Women held three of the nine council seats and half the places on the Greens Committee⁴.

It was a cheap club to join. Harper's guide for 1901 gives an entrance fee of $5 and annual dues of $2, with 98 members, and describes "a nine-hole course on the United States government reserve known as Fort Baker"¹⁶. The club probably had little to spend money on, with no rent to pay, no turf to water and no building to keep. The News found it "in a thriving condition financially" within three weeks of the opening²². Entry to the first tournament cost 25 cents²⁴.

Harper's also lists Draper twice, as vice president and as the club's captain¹⁶. That may explain a small puzzle. The News always called him Colonel, while the Call made him Major or Captain by turns that autumn^25,26,14. This history calls him Colonel, as Sausalito did.

The road was part of the bargain. The first reports promised a level drive thirty feet wide from the town to Fort Baker, built by a hundred military prisoners from Alcatraz^1,23. By late June the existing road was crowded with vehicles every Saturday²⁷. The new one came slowly. In October Shafter was still promising to improve the wagon road "as soon as money can be spared"¹¹. The prisoners finished East Road, 5,800 feet long and eighteen feet wide, in 1901².

The Barracks Move the Holes

"No rights of occupancy" was tested within months. At the end of September the News heard that the government would put up ten brick buildings at Lime Point that winter²⁸. The Quartermaster had drawn a plan for a permanent post, with barracks, officers' housing and offices around a central parade ground at the head of Horseshoe Cove. That was the valley mouth, where the course began and ended².

In October the club "learned with pleasure" that only a barracks and some officers' quarters would be built after all¹⁸. Even so, the green committee would have to study the plans of the United States engineer and "lay out afresh the first two and the last holes of the course," which the soldiers' quarters would cut into¹⁸. By 1 December the work was done, and the Call named the first, fourth and ninth as the holes most changed¹⁵. Shafter had let the committee lay out the course on any part of the reservation it liked, and the Call judged the changes "rather beneficial than otherwise"¹⁵.

The same 1983 history captions a photograph of about 1905 with the statement that the parade ground was part of the Sausalito course⁷. In 1900 the parade ground existed only on the Quartermaster's plan². The caption probably remembers the valley floor as the golfers knew it, before the Army graded it.

The respite was short. In the column that reported the end of the club's tournament, the News noted that a contractor had begun a brick power house at Lime Point, and that work on the new post buildings would start early in the spring²⁹.

Champions and Colonel Bogey

The club's first tournament began on Sunday, 11 November, a day late, and ran for five weeks through rain and mud^30,13,31. It was open to members only and played under the rules of the United States Golf Association, with ladies' singles, gentlemen's singles and mixed foursomes²⁴. Treasurer Miller ran it¹². The Chronicle noted that little was known of anyone's form, since all the players were new to the game¹².

Leonard Chenery won the men's championship. He beat F. B. Findley in a final that darkness stopped on 2 December and that had to be finished later^14,32. Findley had the lowest round of the tournament, a 67, and it won him "the perpetual challenge cup"³². The News thought W. P. Horn the best player in the club and blamed his semifinal loss on carelessness³³.

The women's title stayed in one family. Ten women entered, and the qualifying round was waived for them, "the occasion being their initial venture"³⁷. On Saturday, 8 December, Winifred Mason beat her sister Mabel in the final, and the Call called her "the strongest lady golfer on the Fort Baker links"³⁶. The mixed foursomes ran longest. Horn and Grace Martin tied Mabel Mason and J. M. Kilgarif over the full circuit on 9 December, before a large crowd, and won the replay on Tuesday, 18 December^38,29. The Marin Journal ended the five weeks by ranking the links with any in the state³¹.

The club still lacked a standard to play against. The record for the nine was sixty in mid-November, and then 57, "by a visitor from Boston" whom no paper named^12,35. So the club invited Horace and Harry Rawlins, the professionals of the Oakland Golf Club, one of whom the Call called "an open champion of the United States"³⁵. The News said plainly that they were coming to "establish a bogey score"³³.

They arrived a little after two o'clock on Sunday, 9 December, and an admiring crowd followed them round, struck by the length of their drives³⁶. The clay greens gave the brothers trouble. They varied greatly in speed, and approaches that would have stopped dead on Oakland's turf ran off the far side. Two or three balls vanished in the matted grass³⁶. Harry went round twice in 46 and 46 and beat his "more famous brother" by eight strokes; Horace took 52 and 48^36,39. The Chronicle and the News both credited Harry with breaking the new club's record^38,40.

Seven months after Shafter's careful letter, the Sausalito Golf Club had a course, a champion of each sex, a bogey and leave to build a clubhouse. It did not have a lease, and it would begin to learn the cost of that in the spring, when the Army started to build.

Nine Holes Round a Canyon

The Sausalito Golf Club began 1901 with one season behind it and ninety-eight members on its books. Harper's Official Golf Guide for that year described "a nine-hole course on the United States government reserve known as Fort Baker," a mile and three-quarters from the railroad station, and named a greenkeeper, Will Stevenson.¹ The holes lay, as the San Francisco Call put it, round a canyon down which winds and storms sometimes swept.² The club held the ground only by the Army's leave, and the Army had building plans of its own. As early as October 1900 the greens committee had been told that the first two holes and the last would have to be laid out afresh to make room for soldiers' quarters.³

For a few months the two got along. In March 1901 the Call reported that the new barracks had forced the club to move three or four putting greens, "but this has been done without detriment to the course." The course was in splendid condition, the paper said, except for a few marshy spots still too wet for the long grass to be cut.⁴ By April the fair green was better than it had ever been, though "the clay putting greens still leave much to be desired."⁵

Then the spring rains did their work. By early May thick grass and thistles were coming up.⁶ A return match with the San Rafael Golf Club, which was to have been the first visit of another club to Fort Baker, had to be played at San Rafael on 11 May because the Sausalito course was "so overrun with thistles and weeds that it is in no condition for play." The Call still liked the ground: it was "certainly a sporty one, the hole known as the 'Boer trap' affording as fine a group of natural hazards as can be found anywhere."⁷ Which hole the Boer trap was, no paper says.

The greenkeeper could do little until the rains stopped,⁸ and the club could not afford to give him help. In June the greens were in fairly good order, but the fair green was still very rough, "the revenue from monthly dues not being large enough to employ two or three men constantly in keeping down the thistles and thick grass."⁹

Only one hole-by-hole card of the course survives, in the Official Golf Guide for 1902. Its nine holes measure 226, 224, 248, 249, 228, 160, 350, 319 and 325 yards, which add up to 2,329, with a bogey of 44.¹² Forty-four was the bogey the papers had settled on in December 1900,¹³ so the card probably describes the course as David Stephenson first laid it out and not the one the club was patching together by 1902.

Two Rooms and a Glassed-in Piazza

The golfers had spent their first season dressing in tents. General Shafter had agreed in the autumn of 1900 to let them build a small clubhouse, "a permission never before granted on a Western military reservation," and the Call later credited the request to Colonel Draper.^14,4

Permission was not money. In March 1901 the directors sent members a circular asking them either to lend the club money or to buy lockers at $10 each. The replies were satisfactory, and the directors dropped the idea of a fundraising fair, which might have left a deficit instead of a surplus.⁴ Friends helped. In April the Albatross Club, the officers of the Fish Commission steamer Albatross and their wives, gave tableaux vivants and a play at the San Francisco Yacht Club house for the building fund.⁵ In June an exhibition of French posters and a dance in the same hall raised money to finish the interior.¹⁵

The house was a modest one. "Though of simple construction and containing only two rooms," the Call wrote in May, "it will be a great convenience to the golfers, who have hitherto had no place of shelter or rest on the links."⁶ Later that month the frame was up but the plumbing and fittings were not finished.⁸ At the annual meeting of 25 May, in the guild room of Christ Church, the Sausalito News counted the year's gains more generously: a splendid course, "a fine commodious club house with locker rooms for the gentlemen and ladies," and, best of all, no debt. Three days later the new directors made Draper president, Claude Terry Hamilton vice president, A. Starr Keeler secretary and H. Clay Miller treasurer, with Reginald W. Mason chairman of the greens committee.^16,17

Opening the house took longer than building it. An opening was announced for 8 June and again for the Fourth of July; on the Fourth nothing happened, because the Drapers, the Masons and Miss Borrowe were out of town.^18,19,20 By then the Army's builders had taken over the links, and the formal opening waited for the relaid course in October.

What the club charged is known only from the golf guides. The 1901 guide gives an entrance fee of $5 and annual dues of $2. The 1902 guide gives initiation fees of "$15 and $10," annual dues of $6 and a visitor's fee of 50 cents a day or $2.50 a week, with the membership down to 76.^1,12 The guide does not explain the two initiation fees.

Fire, Then the Builders

On 21 June 1901 a grass fire burned over the hills of the reservation. By the Call's account more than a thousand acres went. Fifty convalescent soldiers under a Corporal Bower saved the post buildings, though the flames came within a few yards of headquarters, and the wife of Ordnance Sergeant Williams helped beat the fire back with wet sacks from their house in a ravine behind the barracks. Then came the charge: "The soldiers say that it was set by a party of golfers from Sausalito who were endeavoring to burn off the links." The golfers, the soldiers said, had run back to town without helping. It was the third fire "laid at the golfers' door," and the Call thought the club would probably be asked to move.²¹

No reply from the club has been found, and no order to leave. But the San Francisco Chronicle's golf writer, two weeks later, treated the burning as plain greenkeeping. Burning the grass of the Fort Baker course, he wrote, had helped it greatly. He did not mention the fire of 21 June, and we cannot be sure he meant it.²²

The same Chronicle note carried the news that mattered more. Because the Government was putting up buildings on the course, "the first, second, third, eighth and ninth holes will be changed." The new course would be flatter, about the same length as before and, the writer hoped, better in every detail.²²

The building was on a scale the club had not expected. Construction of the permanent post began in 1901 under E. J. Jones, a San Francisco contractor, and by 1902 the valley held officers' and non-commissioned officers' quarters, a barracks for a company of artillery, a hospital, a quartermaster's storehouse, a stable, a guardhouse, a bakery, a coal shed and a pump house.¹¹ By late July play was nearly at a standstill, the Call said, because "the golfers have lost several of the holes."²³

In September the members met, Draper in the chair, and heard that the 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 9th holes had been laid out afresh and that their new greens were ready. The Call does not mention the 8th, which the Chronicle had expected to change. There was a good sum in the treasury to put the rest in order,²⁴ and in October a contractor named O'Day was at work on the grounds.²⁵

On Saturday, 19 October 1901, the club formally opened the new course and the clubhouse together, with stages running hourly from the Sausalito post office.^26,25 The house, said the Call, was "a simple structure, built on a hillside," with a room for the ladies, a locker-room for the men and "a glassed-in piazza in front."²⁷ The course was less finished than the house. For months, the Chronicle said that morning, the links had been "practically closed to the members"; now all the holes but the 1st and 3rd were in playing order, and the putting contest was to be held "on each of the seven greens," probably the seven then fit to putt on.²⁸ A week later the 1st and 3rd were still unplayable.²

Cups on a Broken Course

The club's competitions in these two years were small affairs. Its teams, mostly beginners, lost twice to San Rafael in the spring of 1901 and once to Oakland's class B men in June, when the captain could find only four players.^34,7,35

The opening-day contests of 19 October were for cups given by Draper, Charles J. Foster and W. G. Morrow. Ruth Miller won both ladies' prizes, beating Mrs. Mason in a driving play-off by a single foot. Leonard Chenery, who had won the club's first tournament the winter before, scored seven points with three drives when no other man made more than two, and Keeler won the men's putting.^27,36,37

The club's one standing trophy was the Foster Cup, given by Charles J. Foster and held in 1901 by Frank B. Findley.¹⁸ Rain put off the Thanksgiving contest for it.³⁰ When it was played, on 21 December, only six holes were left to play on. The round began at the 4th, ran through the 8th, and then repeated the 4th to the 7th to make nine. R. J. Davis won with 57; Mason had 62 and Dr. A. H. Mays 64. "The course is rough," the Call explained, "and high scores were inevitable."^38,39 Davis was a San Rafael man, a member of that club's governing committee.¹² How he came to win the Sausalito cup the papers do not say.

At the year's end the Call took stock. The first three holes were "entirely spoiled," and outcropping rock made bad lies on the rest. The Government's work was expected to be done by April, and then the course would be laid out afresh, using some of the old holes. There was even a bright side: a garrison was coming, and "most of the younger officers will probably devote a good deal of time to golf."^32,38

"Impossible to Get a Course"

April came and the building went on. A competition was announced for Washington's Birthday 1902, but no result has been found.⁴⁰ In March heavy rains wrecked the putting greens, which would have to be filled with new material, rolled and leveled before anyone could use them.⁴¹ By April there had been no play on the Sausalito links for some months, and the Call judged it useless to improve the course while the Government was still building.⁴²

"So many buildings have been erected or are contemplated, that it will be impossible to get a course."

The end was reported in a few lines of the Call's golf column on 25 October 1902. The course on the military reservation had been unavailable for about a year. The country round Sausalito was too hilly and rugged to offer another tract. The club might not "be able to maintain its existence," and the golfers of the Sausalito hills would try instead to form a lawn-tennis club with one or two asphalt courts.⁴³ No later report of the club, or of what became of its clubhouse, has been found.

The ground itself soon disappeared. Between 1902 and 1903 the Quartermaster Department ran the valley's creeks underground through culverts and spread 25,000 cubic yards of fill to level a parade ground, raising it as much as twelve feet in places. In 1903 it filled the marsh at the head of Horseshoe Cove with 80,000 cubic yards more, and sowed the bare parade ground with 1,350 pounds of Australian rye grass seed.¹¹ The ditches and the marsh of the club's ground rules lay under that fill.

The Long Interval, 1903–1923

For the next twenty years the sources say nothing of golf at Fort Baker. No newspaper item in the files gathered for this history mentions a links there between the Call's notice of October 1902 and the spring of 1924. What follows is a bridge and no more.

The post was finished over the golfers' valley. A commanding officer's house, a headquarters and more quarters rose round Murray Circle in 1903 and 1904, a third barracks was done in 1907, and in 1909 the Army built a tennis court of its own near the hospital. By 1911 four companies of Coast Artillery were quartered there.¹¹

The level lawn became the post's playing field, used for drills and ceremonies and for baseball and football.¹¹ A Fort Baker nine turns up in the Marin Journal in May 1917, losing 9 to 7 to the Y.M.I.⁴⁴ During the World War two of the fort's batteries were disarmed and their guns sent to the front.¹¹

Golf came back with one officer. In December 1923 the Sausalito News reported that the town's young men were practicing basketball twice a week on the Fort Baker court "through the kindness of Captain Manley B. Gibson."⁴⁵ Within months Captain Gibson would have a golf course on the reservation again.

The Course: Nine Holes in the Hills

For twenty years after the Sausalito Golf Club gave up its links, golf on the Fort Baker reservation was a memory. It came back because of one officer. Capt. Manly B. Gibson of the Coast Artillery was at the post by December 1923, when he lent its basketball court to Sausalito's young men.¹ By the spring of 1924 he was its commanding officer.² Two years later the Sausalito News explained what drove him. "Since he was a confirmed addict of the royal and ancient pastime," it said, he had his own ideas on golf architecture, and he decided to build the sort of course he had always hoped to find on his travels.³

He did not wait long. The new Army course opened on Wednesday, 26 March 1924.⁴ The San Francisco Chronicle reported it two days later on its society page, under the headline "New Golf Course Opened at Fort Baker." The course, it said, had been made possible largely through the efforts of Gibson, "under whose supervision the nine holes were laid out," and who had been elected president of the golf club. A Lieutenant Scott was secretary and treasurer, and Col. Percy Bishop opened the course.⁵ Bishop was the coast defense commander for San Francisco.⁶ Five foursomes of officers from Fort Winfield Scott, the Presidio, Fort Miley, Fort McDowell and Alcatraz played that day, and the Fort Scott officers, the News said, made "the highest score," by which it presumably meant the best.²

The nine that opened in March was a beginning, and the building went on for most of a year. That summer the club bought a large mower and, with expert advice, was hurrying the course into shape.⁷ By January 1925 about $3,500 had been spent on the grounds, the work was nearly finished, and the boundary stakes between the first and fifth fairways had come out.⁸

Who did the work? A banking magazine that described the club in November 1925 gave the plainest answer. The fees of civilians and officers had paid to put the course in, it said, and what made that possible was the Army's own equipment: "the use of trucks and tractors, labor, etc."⁹ A later club notice named the labor. The course "was built by the Officers Club, with the aid of 'Battery K,' 6th Coast Artillery," Gibson's own regiment.^10,11 The skilled hand was a Scottish professional, T. J. Muirhead, lately of clubs in Detroit, Vancouver and California.⁸ A Healdsburg paper reported in February 1925 that he had come north "after completing the building of the links at Fort Baker."¹² The likeliest reading is that Gibson designed the holes and that Muirhead and the soldiers built them.

Rain and water were the first troubles. An open house on 1 April 1925 was to have included a golf tournament, but the plan was dropped because two days of rain had damaged the course.¹³ In summer the problem was the reverse. The club had been buying water for its greens from the Marin Municipal Water District. In 1925 it turned to the post's old system of springs piped to tanks, unused since the fort had gone on district water. For about $200 the club repaired it and had plenty for the greens and the course.¹⁴

The fullest description that survives was printed in the Sausalito News on 9 January 1926. The nine lay in the hills of the reservation, and from all but three holes the players looked out on the straits and the Golden Gate. Three greens were creeping bent and the rest fescue. The first, second and fifth holes were on the parade ground, and the second and fifth had punchbowl greens. The second was a dog-leg. A player going for par needed a 200-yard drive to pitch onto the green, and the daring tried to carry the trouble on the right in search of a birdie, though Gibson said most members played it safe for their four.³ The banking magazine was cooler: the course was "attractive, though not in the shape of a course that has been in for years."⁹

That second nine was promised from the autumn of 1925. In September Gibson told the Sausalito Chamber of Commerce that "workmen are now beginning the construction of nine more holes."¹⁹ For a few months the course was larger in print than on the ground: a boosters' circular made a civilian the guest of Uncle Sam "on his 18-hole course."²⁰ The "18-hole course" of that year was the nine played twice. The banking magazine shows what the second nine was really waiting for. The Army and Navy Club had offered to fill the membership to 200 and add 200 more, "in which case the other nine holes are to be immediately put in."⁹ Plans drawn by Gibson with C. E. E. Ellis and the advisory committee were to be announced at a formal opening of the course and clubhouse in February 1926.³ No report of that opening has been found. Gibson was away on two months' leave that spring, and in February the wire story still spoke of "the nine holes now in use."^21,15

The Clubhouse: Tea at the Service Club

Gibson's golfers never built a clubhouse, as the Sausalito club had in 1901. They used the post's. On opening day the officers came in from their first game to the Service Club, where the wives of the four outlying posts had spent the afternoon starting a bridge club, and tea was served. The Chronicle said the double opening had brought "a gay throng" to the little post. Mrs. Gibson was hostess.⁵

When the civilians came, they were given the run of the same rooms. An invitation, the News told Sausalito in July 1924, covered "the golf grounds and the clubhouse."⁷ That December the Chronicle found Sausalito residents using the nine-hole course and "the comfortable Officers' Club," and the News listed a clubhouse and gymnasium on the grounds, with lounging chairs and card tables.^22,23 A ladies' committee kept the club building in order, and one of its members was on hand as hostess on Saturdays, Sundays and holidays.⁸ The papers use "Service Club," "Officers' Club" and "clubhouse" without saying whether they mean one building or two. On one point the banking magazine was clear. The Presidio Golf Club owned a clubhouse off its reservation, but the one at Fort Baker stood on the grounds and was "of course owned by the government."⁹

The comforts arrived in 1925. Steel lockers with Yale locks were installed in June, and Gibson had a large tent set up on the beach for golf club members until bathhouses could be built.^24,25 In August the club added a taxi, a Dodge sedan, which members could summon anywhere in Sausalito through the Fort Baker telephone operator.²⁶ By January 1926 a green fee bought the use of the clubhouse, locker and lounging rooms, and the profits of the club's grill went to the upkeep of the course.³

Money and Committees: Guests, Not Members

The course was meant first for the officers of the fort, "of whom there are but few."⁹ But the opening notice in the News ended with a line that shaped the club's whole life. Many Marin residents had asked about membership, and the commanding officer said that visiting members were welcome.²

Welcoming civilians onto an Army post was not as simple as selling memberships. On 22 April 1924 Gibson invited all golf enthusiasts to play, and the Sausalito Chamber of Commerce named a committee to sign them up.²⁷ By the end of June the arrangement had a name, the Sausalito Chamber of Commerce Golf Register. Residents who deposited $3.00 at the Chamber office received invitation cards to the Fort Baker club, good for one month and renewable, with no initiation fee.²⁸ The reason for the roundabout method was official. "As the War Department prefers to have the Fort Baker Club deal with the Sausalito people as individuals, rather than as a club," the News explained, the register would be kept at the Chamber.⁷ The Chronicle's golf column passed the word across the bay in July.²⁹

In September Gibson spelled out the rules. Civilians could use the course only on an invitation good for a month, and "there can be no charge collected other than green fees." His answer was to issue cards to anyone who wished to play and to charge each three dollars a month. One hundred and fifty were out, and he expected 250.³⁰

The price did not stay at three dollars. In October an advisory committee, meeting at the home of L. C. Koster with C. M. Gunn in the chair and Gibson among its members, adopted formal rules. Visitors would pay no initiation fee, assessments or dues; an invitation lasted a month but could be renewed; the green fee would be $5; and the cap on visitors went up to 200, with 127 then playing.³¹ By December the civilians had elected a committee of five, with H. T. Powell as chairman and Sydney S. Brown as secretary-treasurer, to pass on applications, and a ladies' committee had been named beside it.^23,22 The officers of the Army, Navy and Marine Corps paid dues and assessments, and the civilians paid their $5. The News did the arithmetic: a civilian could play for five years before paying the $300 that an ordinary club charged just to join.²³ Across the bay the distinction was lost. "Dues are $5 a month," the Chronicle said flatly, under a headline announcing that the club "has taken a new lease of life."²² The banking magazine was more exact: civilians paid "green fees (not dues) of $5 per month," and their organization met now and then to confer with the Officers' Club.⁹

The numbers never quite reached the cap. There were 130 civilian members in December 1924 and 145 active members in November 1925, with the list open for 200.^23,9 The terms held. Guests needed the recommendation of two people, and cards were granted for a month at five dollars and renewed informally.^20,32 On paper the course was run by the Fort Baker Officers' Club, "owing to government regulations."³ By January 1926 the civilian advisory committee had grown to twelve, and the honorary officers were a major general, a rear admiral, a Marine general and a brigadier.³

The Army and the Town: A Post Thrown Open

A captain who filled his reservation with civilians needed the Army's blessing, and Gibson seems to have had it. In April 1925 he announced that the Ninth Corps Area had asked for the club's by-laws, plans and operating details as a model for other golf projects on the Pacific Coast.³³ The papers never said which posts copied it, if any did. In February 1926 the Chronicle reported a luncheon of one hundred members in honor of General Neville of the Marine Corps, General Munroe and Captain Gibson, "who are sponsoring the army links on the Marin shore." The officers of Forts Baker and Barry, it added, were the backbone of the new organization.³⁴

The captain gave the town more than golf for its grown-ups. His letter of 4 February 1925 to the secretary of the Sausalito Chamber of Commerce, who happened to be his brother, W. Gordon Gibson, approved free use of the course by junior foursomes from Marin churches, schools and fraternal organizations.^11,35 Players were to be 20 or younger. They could play daily except Saturday afternoons, Sundays and holidays, and the club professional would teach them on Saturday mornings without charge.¹¹ About forty youngsters were expected at the first lesson, in foursomes from Christ Church, Tamalpais High School, the Tamal Club and the Junior Yacht Club.³⁶ At Tamalpais High about fifty students met to talk about golf as a school sport.³⁷

Sausalito repaid him in publicity. The Chamber's president, C. A. Squire, said in September 1925 that he knew of two families who had bought homes in town because of the course.¹⁹ In October the Dipsea Highway Association adopted the course as an advertisement for Marin.²⁰ Capt. J. C. Cantwell, home from Europe and its costly clubs, wrote that at Fort Baker, ten minutes from town, "no membership fee is required."³⁸

The biggest notice came from San Francisco. On Sunday, 24 January 1926, Fort Baker filled the front page of the Examiner's automotive section as "Marin's Government Playground."³⁹ Under the heading "Guns Shadow Fine Golf Course," the article explained the guest cards and promised hazards "sporty enough for the dourest golfer."^39,40 More courses were planned for the reservation, it reported, and since Marin had no municipal course, "Uncle Sam's reservation furnishes the opportunity for the poorer folks to enjoy this game."⁴⁰ A week later the Sausalito News reprinted most of it and turned the "poorer folks" into "sport lovers."⁴¹

"Right under the shadow of the guns that guard the Golden Gate are the greens of an officers' golf course"

A Record, a Club Cup and a Champion

The club went through professionals quickly. Muirhead, the builder, took the officers of Fort Baker round the course every Wednesday in the winter of 1924–25.⁸ In February 1925 the club secured Thomas McHugh, who had played professional golf around the bay for several years and would be on the course on Saturdays and Sundays.⁴² It was McHugh who taught the juniors.³⁶ By summer he was with the Emporium Golf School in San Francisco, but he still ran the club's first tournament.^43,44 By the spring of 1926 a new name was attached to the club. The Chronicle listed "Willie Goggin, representing the new Fort Baker Golf Club," in a professionals' mixed foursome at Lincoln Park in March, and "Willie Goggin, Fort Baker" in a list of professional pairings in June.^45,46

That first tournament was played on Sunday, 12 July 1925, an invitational at medal play over 18 holes. Entries went to Lt. Louis E. Imhoff, the secretary-treasurer, or to McHugh, who set the handicaps from members' last three cards.⁴³ The fee of $1, the Chronicle said, "includes lunch and transportation to and from the course."⁴⁷

The club's standing in the wider game rose in January 1926, when Gibson announced a recruit. Mrs. Frank Sheedy, the women's champion of San Francisco, would play under Fort Baker's name.^50,51 Her spring showed the club's limits as well as its ambitions.

That same April a tournament ran for a fortnight on the Fort Baker course, and Army people and civilians were to drive over on Sunday the 18th for its finish, a championship match between William Bresnahan and William Murphy.²¹ The Sausalito News noted only that "the golf season is now opening."⁵⁴

By the middle of 1926, then, Captain Gibson had made something new at Fort Baker. It was an Army course run by an officers' club, built with Army trucks and soldiers' labor, and played mostly by civilian guests at five dollars a month. Its holes were named for the battles of 1918, and a barge lay in the cove for a second nine that existed only on paper. The Chronicle remarked that April that he had commanded the post for two years.²¹ The course was the same age.

With its battle-named holes, its barge-tee dream and Eddy Redell's record behind it, Captain Gibson's nine had settled by the late summer of 1926 into the life of a small club. The Mill Valley Record reminded its readers that September that the course had been built by the Officers' Club with the aid of Battery K of the 6th Coast Artillery, and the club reported that it was "constantly being improved" under a new professional, Harold Johnstone. Nine holes were in play and the greens were in good condition.^1,2 The club's little folder, the Record's editor added, called the place "A veritable mosquitoless paradise—protected from the wind and fog."¹

How long Johnstone stayed is not recorded. In December 1927 the San Francisco Chronicle carried a dispatch from Martinez: William Hackney, for two years the professional at the Contra Costa Golf Club, had resigned and gone with his family to Sausalito to be professional of the Fort Baker club.³ The Sausalito News caught up with him the following May. "Bill" Hackney, it said, had taken the reins in December and looked for a way to surprise the members when spring came. In odd moments between routine business he and his two assistants "laid out new greens for the second and ninth holes," and the seeding was finished early.⁴ The Record found the course "in splendid condition" for the spring season.⁵

The nine that Hackney tended was no longer quite the nine of Gibson's card. In January 1926 the Sausalito News had printed seven par fours and two par threes, a par of 34, and a wire story that spring gave the length as 2,740 yards.^6,7 By April 1928 par had come down a stroke. The Chronicle reported that Sam Heiman, with a 77 and a handicap of 18, had a net 59 in the club's week-end tournament and "was seven under par." The sweepstakes were played over eighteen holes, twice round the nine, so par was 66 for the day and 33 a round.^8,9 The Golfer's Year-book for 1930 agrees: it lists the Fort Baker Officers Club at Sausalito with nine holes, 2,569 yards and a par of 33.¹⁰ That is some 170 yards shorter than the course of 1926. Which hole lost its stroke, and when, no source says. Hackney's new second and ninth greens were probably part of the change, since they are the only rebuilding the papers report, but nothing ties them to the shorter total.⁴

One more glimpse of the ground comes from the Chronicle's motoring pages. In July 1928 the Sunday motor section printed a photograph taken at a Fort Baker tee, the only picture of the 1920s course yet found.¹² A month later the same pages recommended a drive from Sausalito to the gates of Fort Baker, "through the grounds of this military post, across the golf links" and on through the government tunnel toward Fort Barry.¹³ The road to the tunnel, in other words, ran through the course.

The Clubhouse: A Lounge, a Card Room and Sausalito 10

The golfers' clubhouse was the Army's. Government regulations required that the course be run by the Fort Baker Officers' Club, and the monthly green fee bought the use of its rooms.⁷ In 1926 that meant "the conveniences of the clubhouse, resturaunt, locker, and lounging rooms," as the Record spelled it. Lessons were arranged through the Post Exchange steward, telephone Sausalito 10.¹

Over the winter of 1927–28 the clubhouse was "reconditioned and decorated." The News described "a huge, tastefully decorated lounge room, women's card room, dining room and men's locker rooms," and noted that the women of the club were making good use of them.⁴ On a Tuesday in April 1928 the club held a Ladies' Day, with a morning tournament for a prize, luncheon at one o'clock and bridge afterward. Forty-five members and guests came.^14,15

Money: Five Dollars a Month

The club's finances were simple, because the Army's rules made them so. Civilians could not belong to an Army post organization. They played as invited guests of the officers and paid a monthly green fee.¹⁶ The number of invitations was set by the Commanding Officer of the Harbor Defenses of San Francisco, and in September 1926 he raised it. The Chronicle reported authority to increase the membership "from 150 to 200," so that fifty more people could be invited.² The Record printed the terms: "There are no initiation fees, assessments, or dues," only the $5 monthly green fee. The club said it was free of debt and fully equipped, that the newcomers' fees would all go to "new construction work," and that it belonged to the Northern California and California golf associations, so its players could enter their tournaments.¹ Johnstone advised local golfers "to act promptly, as the maximum membership may soon be attained."¹⁷

Getting there was half the trick. In October 1926 Forts Baker and Barry began a trial Saturday boat from Pier 4, at the foot of Van Ness Avenue in San Francisco, and civilian members of the golf club rode free on showing their cards. The News credited Gibson, "commander at the fort," with arranging it.^18,19

The maximum was not attained, or not kept. In March 1928 the Chronicle ran what amounts to an advertisement: "The Fort Baker Officers' Club offers to civilians the privilege of its nine-hole golf course upon the payment of its monthly green fee of $5." There were still no initiation fees or assessments. The course was two miles from Sausalito and forty minutes from San Francisco, and "not crowded. There are at present about eighty-five members."²¹ Why a club allowed 200 had about 85 is not explained. The redecorated clubhouse and Hackney's plans brought in new names that spring, the News said, and in July the Chronicle's caption writer remarked that "scores of San Franciscans" used the links for Saturday and Sunday play.^4,12

The terms held into the new decade. The Year-book of 1930 offered "Guest memberships for civilians, $5.00 monthly or $50.00 annually," and for the first time a daily rate for visitors, $1, or $1.50 at weekends and on holidays. It counted 50 members. Its officers were all soldiers: Maj. J. D. Brown president, Lt. H. W. Smith vice-president and Capt. J. B. Muir Jr. secretary-treasurer. The professional was now James Thrapp, a name that appears in none of the newspaper items gathered for this history; Hackney had evidently moved on.¹⁰

The Post and the Neighbors

The founder left first. In January 1927 the United Press reported that Gibson had tested his "Gibson code," a numbered vocabulary of more than 10,000 words meant for writing across languages.²² In February he was "taken seriously ill" and rushed to the hospital at the Presidio.²³ In June the Army ordered him from Fort Baker to the Coast Artillery School at Fort Monroe, Virginia, sailing on 3 July.²⁴ The News still called him "Captain Manly B. Gibson of Fort Baker" that November, probably from habit, since the item concerned his brother Gordon's leaving town.²⁵

Then the Army emptied the post. The Coast Artillery garrison at Fort Baker was deactivated in 1928, and until 1937 the fort was kept by a caretaker detachment.²⁶ There was still a commanding officer to pose beside the Essex that summer, and the Officers' Club still ran the golf.^12,21

Work on the land did not stop. In 1929 the Quartermaster Department built a concrete seawall at the western edge of Horseshoe Cove and a rock-and-concrete bulkhead across its mouth, widened the road behind the wall, and resurfaced the post roads with macadam.²⁶ In 1931 the Army granted an easement through the reservation for the Golden Gate Bridge and its roads.²⁶

To its neighbors the course remained a county asset. A Marin real-estate page in the Chronicle of April 1929 counted five golf courses that were drawing new residents: Mill Valley, "the Fort Baker course, located at Sausalito," Belvedere, the Marin Golf and Country Club at San Rafael and the new Meadow Club beyond Fairfax.²⁷ In June 1930 the Sausalito News's railroad column teased two men from the Northwestern Pacific's Sausalito office for the hours they were putting in on the Fort Baker links.²⁸ Yet that December, when sixteen Sausalito golfers beat Mill Valley in a team match, the News remarked that the town had no golf club organization through which to raise a side, and did not mention the fort at all.²⁹

The papers carried one grim story. On the first Sunday of February 1930, the Chronicle reported, Walter Boland of Mill Valley was teeing off at Fort Baker when he missed his drive. The club swung on and caught Miss Glenna Brown, 23, who was standing near the tee, across the left side of the face, breaking her jaw.³⁰ The Mill Valley Record, which dated the accident 3 February, said the foursome had only just started, and that she was in the hospital at Ross.³¹ The story ended better than it began. Four months later the Chronicle's society page announced that Miss Brown and Boland were to be married that evening in San Rafael.³²

Records, and One Ace

The club's competitions in these years were modest and regular. In September 1926 Johnstone announced "weekly medal play handicap sweepstakes" every Sunday, with golf balls for prizes; Frank Willey took the first reported low gross with 79 and bettered it a week later with 77.^17,33 They were still going in April 1928, when Hackney was "mapping out several special tournaments for the summer."^34,4

The only records of these years are two lines in the Year-book of 1930. The amateur course record belonged to H. I. Borden, with a 74 in 1928, and the professional record to A. J. White, with a 68 in 1929.¹⁰ Neither round was reported in any newspaper found, and neither man is otherwise known to this history. Borden's figure is a puzzle, because Eddy Redell had gone round twice in 73 in 1925 and been credited with the record then.³⁵ The likeliest explanation is that the book began again after the course was altered, but that is an inference; the Year-book does not say.

After Clarkson's ace the papers fall silent. Whether the course closed that year or was simply played on by a few officers and their friends is not known. The Depression and a post without a garrison are the likely reasons, but no source of these years says so. What became of Uncle Sam's nine, and how it came back, is the next chapter's story.

The Course: Quiet Years and a Relief Crew

After George Clarkson's hole in one at the end of August 1931, the newspapers stopped writing about golf at Fort Baker.¹ Nothing on the course has been found for 1932, 1933 or 1934: no sweepstakes, no professional, no word of the greens. Whether the nine was shut or was simply played by a few officers and their friends, no source says. The post itself was quiet. The National Park Service's history of Fort Baker says the Coast Artillery garrison had been deactivated in 1928 and that a caretaker detachment kept the place until 1937.² The man who had built the course with the soldiers of Battery K was a long way off. Manly B. Gibson spent 1931 to 1935 with the 9th Coast Artillery at Fort Banks, Massachusetts.^3,4

The silence broke in February 1935, in a single sentence at the foot of the Sausalito News's waterfront column. Members of the Fort Baker Officers Club had announced that the golf course was soon to be "reconditioned and reorganized."⁵ The labor came from the Depression. That spring the Coast Artillery Journal reported that an average of 500 State Emergency Relief Administration workers a day were improving the harbor-defense posts, building roads, tennis courts and a baseball field. Among their jobs, the Fort Baker links were being worked on to bring them back to their condition in General Bishop's time.⁶ That was Percy P. Bishop, who as a colonel had opened Gibson's course in March 1924.⁷ The standard, in other words, was still the old nine.

The ground around the links was changing all the same. In 1935 the slopes behind the officers' quarters and the parade ground were graded, flattened and planted with ice plant, and Works Progress Administration laborers began to arrive at the post.² The Army had granted the Golden Gate Bridge an easement through the reservation in 1931, and by 1935 the approach roads were being planned across the hills above.² When the News printed George Russell's aerial photograph that July, with the Marin approaches drawn on it, the caption explained that the main approach would leave its tunnel on the Fort Baker reservation, above the buildings and the golf links.⁸ It is the one glimpse of where the course lay in these years: on the low ground of the post, below the new highway.

How far the 1935 restoration went, and whether anyone played over it, the sources do not say. Of the golf of 1936 nothing has been found. Gibson, now a major, was on Corregidor in the Philippines, where he was the post's arboricultural officer and had lately joined its Hole-in-One Club.⁹

The Course: Major Gibson Builds Again

In April 1937, the year the Golden Gate Bridge was completed, the Army and Navy Journal printed the order that sent Major Gibson from Fort Worden, Washington, to the 6th Coast Artillery at Fort Winfield Scott.^10,2 By October he commanded Forts Baker and Barry, and he had gone straight back to his golf course. The News reported his announcement that the Fort Baker Golf Club would be reorganized and that the course was already under construction, supervised by Larry Brazil, the professional at the Presidio Golf Club in San Francisco.¹¹ He made Sunday, 31 October, a visitors' day for Marin residents, golfers especially, with an inspection of the course on the program at 11:20.¹¹

The money was federal. The News said later that Gibson had planned the project for years and that it reached its final construction stage in 1937, when WPA funds were released for it.¹² The Park Service's chronology of the post lists the golf work among the WPA jobs finished in 1938. The landscaping included grading tees and greens for a golf course, and a second entry has the baseball field and the golf course graded.² In September 1938 Gibson announced a far larger WPA project, $856,598 to rehabilitate both forts, with 908 men to be ferried over from Fort Mason for a year. Its published list of work does not name the golf course, but it covers the grading, seeding and planting of the post's slopes and important areas and the development of a local water supply.¹³

By March 1938 a new man was in charge. Men and machinery were busy on the course, several practice holes were in play, and the News expected the work to be finished in about sixty days under a Mr. Warman, an expert in golf construction.¹⁴ He was James A. Warman, formerly of Yosemite, whom Gibson introduced in April as the club's new professional.¹⁵

The sixty days became sixteen months. In September 1938 the opening was promised for November.^16,17 In March 1939 Gibson put it in the last week of June, and the News reported that extensive alterations had been made.¹⁸ Six holes were fully completed in early April, and at the end of that month the last of the greens were being graded.^19,20 In mid-June the club finally named Sunday, 9 July, and gave the measure of the thing: 6,137 yards, with eighteen tees to nine holes, and a par of 71.²¹

Who drew the new course is not recorded. Brazil supervised the building in 1937 and Warman directed it from 1938, but no source calls either man its architect, and the grading was done by WPA labor under a commanding officer who had built a course there once before.^11,16,2 What the papers do establish is that this was more than the old nine put back in order. The News called it Fort Baker's new nine-hole course, and the San Francisco Chronicle's golf column, announcing the dedication, called it "the recently redesigned golf course" at Fort Baker.^18,26

The Clubhouse and the Range

No new clubhouse is reported. As in the 1920s, the golfers' house was the post's own. The junior lessons of 1938 were given at the Officers' Club, and the clubhouse that the same notice opened to the public for badminton on Friday afternoons and weekends was probably that building, since the badminton exhibition of the previous October had been played there.^29,11 On dedication day the putting contest was held at the clubhouse, the 6th Coast Artillery Band played in front of it, and cars for the concert were parked on the parade ground, which puts the house on or near the parade.³⁰

One thing was new. In April 1938 a driving range was being built at the entrance to Fort Baker, in full view of the Golden Gate Bridge.²⁹ By 1939 practice was charged at 30 cents an hour.²⁵

Money: Guest Cards and Quarters

The Army's rule had not changed since 1924: civilians could not be members of an officers' club, only its guests, and could be charged nothing but green fees.³¹ Gibson worked inside it as he had before. In April 1938 he set the fee at $2 a month.¹⁵ That November he invited Sausalito residents to play as guests of the Fort Baker Golf Club for the same $2 monthly fee in 1939, which was to keep the course in condition, with no initiation fees, dues or assessments. The guest list was limited to 100, and 71 cards were already out.²⁸ The News's editor told readers to apply at once.³² In 1924 Gibson had 150 cards out at $3 a month and expected 250.³¹

By the opening the monthly card had given way to a pay-as-you-play scale. A round of the nine cost 25 cents. A caddie was 40 cents for nine holes and 75 for eighteen. A $5 book of coupons sold for $4.50 for a limited time and could be used by anyone in the family.^21,25 The club kept the Army's distinctions. Regular members were members of the Fort Baker Officers' Club and associate members belonged to the Harbor Defense officers' club. Everyone else was a guest, active with a coupon book or inactive if merely registered. Play was by invitation and appointment. A golfer telephoned Sausalito 16, the starter named the day and hour, and Mondays were set aside for slow players.²⁵

Sausalito and the Tam High Golfers

Sausalito took to the Army's course as it had in the twenties. A week after the 1937 visitors' day the News's editorial column said local golfers were happy to find the links open again and grateful for the major's invitation, the course being so much handier than any other in the county.³³ Gibson kept the door open while the building went on. In April 1939 the officers invited residents to play free on Saturdays and Sundays, with a guest card from the Chamber of Commerce office on Portal Street as the only formality, and in May the free invitation was extended to the whole community. Charges began on 1 June.^19,34

The young were looked after from the start. Warman's first act as professional, in April 1938, was to offer five free Saturday-morning lessons to Army children and their high-school and junior-college friends, and in 1939 the club was still giving juniors a free class at nine every Saturday.^15,29,25

Dedication Day, 9 July 1939

Gibson made the opening a holiday for two forts. Baker and Barry held open house, with a beach picnic at Rodeo Lagoon from eight in the morning and a $5 prize for the longest bass caught at Fort Baker.^38,30 The golf began at 1:30 with a professional exhibition match. From two to four there was a nine-hole putting contest at the clubhouse and a fifty-yard pitch-and-putt to the first green, each a ten-cent sweepstake, the one for $5 in cash and the other for a coupon book. The band played from four to five while members and guests, registration certificates in hand, went in to the reception.^38,30

The club's roll of honor was all Army. Brig. Gen. H. T. Burgin was honorary president. Col. T. A. Terry of the 6th Coast Artillery and a lieutenant colonel of the 65th, whose name the News printed as "O'Roar," were honorary vice presidents. The president was Maj. Evans R. Crowell, newly arrived from Fort Leavenworth to take over the post.^39,40

Of the day itself there is no report. Who played the exhibition, what they scored and who caught the bass have not been found, and no course record or championship is known from the rebuilt nine. The Park Service chronology notes only an open house for the fort's civilian neighbors, with a fishing derby, an exhibition golf match and a beach picnic.² The News's editorial the following Thursday confirmed that the club had been dedicated on the Sunday. It said the course had improved grounds that lay undeveloped for years.¹²

It was also Gibson's farewell. The News called the dedication the culmination of more than two years of his work, and its account breaks off, in a damaged passage, just as it says to whom he would turn the course over.³⁰ He and Mrs. Gibson left the post on Friday, 14 July, and sailed from San Francisco on the transport Republic on the 18th, bound by way of Panama and New York for Independence, Missouri, where he was to head military science and tactics at the high school.⁴¹ Major Crowell's promise to the town, as the editor reported it, was four words long: "We will carry on!"¹²

After the Band Went Home

The rebuilt course was dedicated on Sunday, 9 July 1939. Major Gibson sailed nine days later, and his successor, Maj. Evans R. Crowell, gave the town a promise: "We will carry on!"^1,2 Then the golf news stops. No tournament, club election or green-fee notice from Fort Baker has turned up in the Sausalito News or the Mill Valley Record after that July. In those same papers, golf news in 1941 meant the Mill Valley club and its city championship.^3,4

The post had other things to think about. In October 1940 the News printed the Army's building program for the two forts: forty-one barracks, a dozen mess halls, recreation halls, a theatre at Fort Barry and, at Fort Baker, a 250-bed hospital.⁵ By January 1941 Crowell, now a lieutenant colonel commanding both posts, was sitting with a Sausalito committee and WPA officials to find clubrooms for his soldiers. He favored the South School because it was within walking distance of the post.⁶ The town's attention had turned from guest cards to dances and cakes for draftees.⁷

The Hospital on the Marsh

In May 1941 the War Department approved a large station hospital at Fort Baker. It was meant to serve the fast-growing force of coast-defense troops around the harbor and to relieve Letterman General Hospital in the Presidio.⁸ The Sausalito News gave it three lines on 3 July: twenty-five separate buildings, to be started that week, at a cost of $390,978. The Mill Valley Record rounded the bill to $400,000.^9,10

The site was the low ground between Horseshoe Cove and the foot of the parade ground. It had been a marsh until the Army filled it, by 1903, and it had stayed largely unbuilt ever since.⁸ According to the National Park Service's history of the post, the standard wartime buildings, drawn from the Army's 700-series mobilization plans and joined by covered corridors, went up in about three months. (Its narrative counts twenty-five buildings and its chronology twenty-four.) A wooden bulkhead followed in 1942 to protect them and hold the shoreline, and by the end of the war the complex had grown to forty-five buildings.⁸

The hospital was at work quickly. At the end of August 1941, when two buses collided in the fog on the Waldo approach, the News reported that the first man on the scene was a colonel from the Fort Baker hospital, who took charge.¹¹ After Pearl Harbor, a large number of patients were moved across the Gate from Letterman to what the paper called the newly constructed hospital at Fort Baker.¹²

No Last Round

No newspaper found so far reports the closing of the golf course. There is no farewell tournament, no notice to the guest-card holders, no word of what became of the clubhouse or the professional. The only narrative account is a single line in Jack Tracy's 1983 history of the town, set among the war years: "Sausalito's golf course at Fort Baker was closed."¹⁵

The plainest statement came six years after the hospital was built. On 22 May 1947 the Sausalito News printed a photograph of the post looking toward the Golden Gate Bridge, with the parade ground in the center, the hospital buildings at left and the chapel at lower right. Together, the caption said, the parade ground and the hospital covered ground that many older Sausalitans knew well from the days of Fort Baker's excellent golf course.¹⁶

"This feature was sacrificed during World War II with the construction of the hospital buildings."

That caption is also the best evidence of where the 1939 course lay, since no card or map of it survives in the sources. It puts the holes on the parade ground and on the flat by the cove. The course cannot have filled the whole parade ground, because cars were parked there for the band concert on dedication day.^16,17 The date of the last round is probably the summer of 1941, when the builders arrived, but that is an inference from the hospital's timetable and not something a newspaper said.⁹

The course did not come back with the peace. In September 1949 the Mill Valley Record, reporting a professional's hopes for a public eighteen north of San Rafael, counted only two courses left in Marin, the Mill Valley municipal nine and the Meadow Club. San Rafael and Sleepy Hollow had been cut into house lots, and the course at Fort Baker, it added, "too, has been abandoned."¹⁸

After the Army

The hospital was taken off active duty in 1948. An Army medical laboratory had moved to the post from Fort Ord in 1946, and in 1956 the hospital buildings became the home of the 6th Army Medical Laboratory. Most of them were pulled down in 1983.⁸

By then the Army's own days at Horseshoe Cove were numbered. As early as January 1954 the Mill Valley Record was campaigning to have the three Marin forts, which it called obsolete, made over into a state recreation park, and golf courses were on its list.²¹ Congress created the Golden Gate National Recreation Area in 1972. The Army handed over its Marin land in pieces from 1975, and in 2002 it gave up the last 71 acres, the core of the old post around the parade ground.⁸ The Park Service's landscape report, written soon afterward, noted that a retreat and conference center was being planned there under lease.⁸ Today the Park Service lists Cavallo Point, with its lodging in restored post buildings, among its partners at Fort Baker, and describes the place as more than twenty-five historic Army buildings clustered around a main parade ground.²² No golf course is among its attractions.

Three Courses, One Landlord

The three courses had the same ground and the same landlord. Tracy's history remembers the parade ground as part of the Sausalito Golf Club's links, Captain Gibson put his first, second and fifth holes on it in the 1920s, and the 1947 caption laid the last course across it.^15,23,16

They also had the same terms. The Army's letter of May 1900 let Sausalito play on the reservation on the understanding that the permission gave "no rights of occupancy."²⁴ In the 1920s, by government regulation, the Officers' Club ran the course and civilians paid green fees as its guests.²³ The golfers were always guests, and twice the host needed the room. In 1902 the San Francisco Call reported that so many buildings had gone up on the reservation that it would be "impossible to get a course."²⁵ In 1941 it was a hospital, and that time no paper said anything at all.