7de
PINEHURST
OUTIaOOK,
VOL. XXIV.
EARLY SEASON NUMBER 19201921
10 CENTS
Pinehurst s Twenty-fifth Anniversary
nT is a little more than a quarter of a
century that I have personally known
the Sandhills country of North Caro
lina. In February, 1894, the thermometer
In my town in Pennsylvania persistently
stayed below zero day and night for a
week, and my wife and I, like the
famous Chi Chill Blue, the Lapland
tinker, set out one day to seek some
place where we might keep us warm.
We hit Southern Pines, and it was not
much to boast of. Twenty-six years
ago Aberdeen and Southern Pines were
beginning! to prull away from Manly
which had been the metropolis of the
turpentine belt, and any one of the
three places perhaps migut have had
300 people.
But we had left people enough be
hind and we cared mighty little when
we arrived in the promised land whether
people were here or not. That year the
Arbutus blossomed in February, and the
peach trees, and I bought eggs for ten
cents a dozen, and chickens for about
the same price, and I bought them and
carried them to the house not so much
because we wanted them as because they
were so cheap it was sport to pick them
up at that price. We fooled around
here in the sand barrens for the short
time we could be away, and went back
to find the water pipes frozen up, a bliz
rard raging, and the raw mountain
spring ahead. But before we went back
By BION H. BUTLER
Pinehurst' s First Club House 1895
to Pennsylvania we bought . a farm. I
look back at that farm, with its six or
eight acres of cleared land, and a little
cabin in a boundary of rail fence, and
say a blessing on its unpretentious hope
fulness, for we have called it a farm
ever since for want of any better name
for a body of land surrounded by a line
running south seven degrees east to a
post, etc., and thence to the beginning.
We paid two dollars an acre for the
blooming thing, and we bought it be
cause we had never seen anything under
the sun that was as agreeable to behold
as that farm with its magnificent cli
mate, and because like the chickens
there was a certain joy in buying things
that were so cheap. That farm and that
climate meant coming back frequently,
and we kept coming until we came and
stayed.
After we bought our farmland got on
the regular visiting list of the Sandhills,
action commenced over in a new spot
that was called Pinehurst. Now Pine
hurst is to me one of the most inter
esting creations on earth, because
like any honest thing it has landei
about as far from where it started as a
boy or a pup. James Tufts was a
philanthropist who discovered the North
Carolina Sand country and was im
pressed by it, and he undertook to lo
cate on a big tract of cheap land he
bought from the Pages a community in
which people in uncertain health might
get to the land in a mild climate where
they could live out of doors and thrive
and maybe get well. Or at least if they
could not get well perhaps they could
live a happier and more hopeful life
while they lived.
This scheme of Mr. Tufts came to
nothing, for eminent physicians in Bos
ton advised against gathering a com
munity of invalids, and Mr. Tufta
abandoned it. Then came the plan of a
community of winter homes and Pine
hurst accepted that idea and has. fol
lowed it along to the present time. The
dominant idea has never been over
looked, but in arriving at the present
prospect it has seen the side lines
amended many a time.
James Tufts died, and he was suc
ceeded by Leonard Tufts, his son. What
the younger man has done would sur
prise the father as much as it probably
has surprised the son on those days
when he sits down to take a retrospec
tive view of Pinehurst. Well, Pine
hurst was presented to the people of the
North as a Winter possibility in the
Sandhills, not too far from New York
and Boston, with good hotels, hunting,
climate, always that feature of climate
and the people found out the place and
began to come this way. And because
those of us who came found more than
we had looked " for many have stayed.
(Continued on Page Fifteen)
- ft
I,.-, i t f
v.
4V
Pinehurst Country. Club