Nine Holes in
Warner Canyon

The story of the land starts with a mapmaking mistake. When surveyors ran the lines between the ranchos Saucelito and Corte Madera del Presidio, they found a wedge of 300 to 400 acres that belonged to neither. It became government land, and the Record later called it the "Lost Acreage."¹ Dr. Sidney B. Cushing received a patent for 162.01 acres of it in 1882 and named the district Blithedale, and the San Francisco dentist Dr. Alexander Warner held a further part.¹

Dr. Warner acquired the canyon that took his name in 1884,² and library photographs show the family there in the mid-1880s.^3,4 When he died in May 1919, just as the golf club was being born, the Record wrote that he "has left his name permanently to one of our beautiful canyons."⁵ His daughter Alysse had married Benjamin P. Upham in 1914, and the couple lived in Mill Valley.^6,5

Between the town and the Warner land lay the Boyles' property. Mrs. Carmelita Boyle gave the town the land for Boyle Park, "in Warner Canyon,"^7,8 and her son Hugh A. Boyle and his wife Ida owned the canyon floor beyond it.⁹ Boyle Park had a ball field, and a dirt road ran past it up into the canyon.¹⁰

A Club for a "Sleepy Hollow"

The golf club began as a different idea. In 1939 the Record said it started "in a casual and unpremeditated fashion," when friends "spending a pleasant evening at the home of Mr. and Mrs. John Finn" suggested a social club.¹¹ On April 15, 1916, a prospectus in the Record called Mill Valley "notoriously a 'sleepy hollow' from a social standpoint." Its answer was a family club with a central clubhouse that would also "secure golf grounds within reasonable distance."¹²

By June the Mill Valley Town and Country Club was incorporated, with more than eighty members and Frank F. Bostwick, the town's first mayor, as president. It announced that "good golf links, pleasantly situated and easily accessible, have been secured."¹³ But the club never got its clubhouse. It "abruptly terminated its activities when the United States entered the war,"¹⁴ since "everyone was too busy with war activities to think or plan further for such an undertaking."¹¹

A Picnic at Boyle Park

The project came back after the Armistice, but now it was about golf. "Men who would not have been interested in a social organization," the 1939 history observed, "were enthusiastic for the golf club."¹¹ On April 15, 1919, the dormant club met at the Bank of Mill Valley "to consider … the possible merging of the country club into a golf club," and the Record added its blessing: "A golf club would be a fine thing for Mill Valley."¹⁴

A week later the Record invited the whole town to a picnic. "Come to Boyle Park tomorrow if you are interested in golf," it urged, and picnickers gathered "near the ball grounds" on Sunday, April 27, to hear the plans and look over the site.⁷

The new Mill Valley Country Club chose Godfrey Eacret, a San Francisco jeweler, as president.¹¹ Eacret, Bostwick and Arthur Smith negotiated for "a tract of thirty-five acres belonging to Mrs. Ida M. Boyle,"¹¹ though the Boyles' deed came only in February 1921.¹⁵

To build the course the club turned to John H. Clark of San Rafael, a "golf course architect" who had laid out the Marin Golf and Country Club and "the original Ingleside Links in San Francisco."^16,17 Members soon called him "Daddy" or "Pop" Clark.^18,19 In June the Call reported that "one hundred enthusiastic charter members" hoped to open within six weeks, and Clark promised "one of the sportiest of golf courses on the coast."²⁰ That proved too hopeful; the greens were only sown in August.¹⁹ By September grass was "rapidly growing on all the greens" and a leveling machine had "worked wonders" on the fairways.²¹ By mid-October members were practicing, and Clark's son Bob came over on weekends to give lessons.²²

Golf Is Now a Reality

On November 1, 1919, the Record declared: "Golf is now a reality in Mill Valley." The nine holes measured about 2,500 yards, with "ideal natural hazards, rolling fairways and well-located greens."¹⁶ The whole course had cost only $4,000.¹⁹ Its spine was the winding creek, in play on seven of the nine holes, "sometimes all nine." The eighth tee had a view "with stately Tamalpais in the background," and the Chronicle's Hay Chapman twice watched Bob Clark drive its green in one afternoon.¹⁹ Par was 34.²³

Work on a clubhouse designed by the Berkeley architect Walter H. Ratcliff began on October 18,²² and by late November the roof was on. George Lowell, looking over the links, said, "I've met more Mill Valley people in the last month at the Golf Club than during the last five years in Mill Valley."²⁴ Bob Clark was "permanently engaged as professional and greens keeper,"²⁴ and on November 22 the Record printed the first membership roster, close to a hundred names.²⁵

The beginners played badly and kept coming back. One golfer spent six of his seven hours "in the creek looking for the elusive ball." A week later he was at the "top of my form—only spent half of my time in the creek."²⁶ As 1919 ended, a town that had called itself a sleepy hollow three years earlier had its own golf club, on "what six months ago was a cow pasture."²³

"Golf is now a reality in Mill Valley."

"What Six Months Ago Was a Cow Pasture"

When 1920 opened, the Mill Valley Country Club had nine holes in play in Boyle Canyon and half a clubhouse on the hill above them¹. A month later the club's column announced its first tournament, to be played "on what six months ago was a cow pasture"². Frank Walsh won it on February 8 with a 95³.

The man who had turned the pasture into a golf course was still on the grounds. John H. Clark of San Rafael, whom the members called "Pop" or "Daddy," had laid out the nine, and in January 1920 the board gave him complete charge of the course⁴. He mowed the fairways behind a horse, and the column joked that no train engineer was more polite than Daddy Clark backing his horse mower off the course to let players through⁵. A year later it remembered him as the man "who knew all the little blades of grass on the greens by their first names"⁶.

His son Bob was the club's first professional. Hay Chapman of the Chronicle watched him drive the 254-yard eighth green twice in one afternoon, over the barranca that guarded it⁷. That creek was the course's signature, a hazard on seven of the nine holes⁷, and members soon called No. 3 "Hell's Fairway"⁸.

The club filled fast. The first annual meeting in June 1920 capped the membership at 150⁹, and by December there was a long waiting list¹⁰. The boys of Mill Valley came with the course. In March a visitor found Oliver Sollum serving as caddie master over seventeen boys, whose caddie house was still only a shed¹¹. By 1924 the members carried the bags in an annual Caddy Tournament, and one boasted that the club had "the finest bunch of Caddies of any club in the United States"¹².

A Clubhouse on the Hill

The Berkeley architect Walter H. Ratcliff designed the clubhouse to follow the contour of the hill, with a porch looking down on the first tee and ninth green^14,15. It was built in units as money allowed, and Chapman held the club up as a model: its organizers spent all they could on the course and put the balance into a modest but "thoroughly comfortable and cozy clubhouse"¹⁶. The women of the house committee furnished it with wicker before a fireplace, and club women sewed the drapes^17,18. On New Year's night 1921 about seventy-five members sat down to dinner in the completed clubhouse, with President Godfrey Eacret helping to carry in the turkeys¹⁹.

The building became the center of a busy social life: Saturday-night dances to a new Victrola, a masquerade, a "days of '49" costume party^21,22,23. From 1922 there were barbecues in the redwood grove on the golf grounds²⁴, and at the 1923 one Hawaiian musicians played under lanterns strung in the trees. The Record closed its account with a tribute: "The Country Club is preserving one of the most attractive valleys in Southern Marin"²⁵. By 1928 the annual dinner ended at the fourth tee, where by bonfire and colored flares Harold Bunn and a dozen members staged a Maori haka²⁶.

Behind the club's presidents stood the secretary-treasurer, John F. Forbes. When he stepped down in 1927, the Record called him "the financial father of the institution since its inception," whose advice had made the club "unique as a club of low dues and no assessments"²⁸.

The professionals changed more often. In September 1922 Bob Clark made the first hole-in-one on the links, at the fourth³¹, and within a month his resignation was in the directors' hands³². By 1924 Arthur Whiting ran the shop¹². The course stayed short and full of trouble. Par was 66 in 1928, when Bunn shot 68, the lowest amateur score since the club began³³.

Matches with the Neighbors

In April 1920 the club put up a purse for an exhibition foursome in which John Black of Claremont, holder of the open championships of both Northern and Southern California, played with his brother Bob against Harold and Bob Clark³⁴. The Record never printed the score, but it did report that "John Black said he would like to take No. 3 home with him to Claremont"³⁵.

Team golf with the other Marin clubs began that month. The Marin Golf and Country Club at San Rafael was harder, and won the early meetings^36,37. Then, in a driving rain on November 27, 1921, Mill Valley beat Marin 11 to 8, and the next morning, the Record said, the Marin men lifted their hats to the winners on the ferry³⁸. The prize came on July 23, 1922, when Mill Valley won the county championship, with Marin fifteen strokes behind³⁹. Eacret presented the champions with gold medals at a stag dinner⁴⁰. Marin won the title back in 1923⁴¹.

Not every match went well. In March 1925 Berkeley beat a 22-man Mill Valley team 26 points to nothing, in a heavy fog new to players used to a clear sky⁴³. By 1929 the Tamalpais High School team practiced on the links, and one of its matches was held up "by a herd of deer on the eighth fairway"⁴⁴.

Mr. Mills's Camera

Most of the pictures we have of the club in these years come from one member. Arthur D. Mills of Hillside Avenue was a painter and photographer, and by March 1920 he had "complete photographic records of Boyle Canyon before and after the time that contented cows were replaced by the discontented golfer"¹⁸.

While the others played, Mills liked to perch somewhere in the woods or hills and photograph them⁴⁶. One Sunday that winter he was painting at his easel near the fourth green when a match between Frank Walsh, Godfrey Eacret and Ben Upham was interrupted by a mountain lion. Mills chased it up the hill with his tripod⁴⁶.

"A huge, tawny creature he was. As I came over the rise he was perched on a rock, and we stared at each other, not a stone's throw away."

The deer were part of the course. In 1926 a buck, two does and three fawns were living on the fairways, and Eacret was teaching one doe, "Salley," to pose for her picture⁴⁸.

Mills gathered his golf pictures into an album, A Visit to the Mill Valley Golf and Country Club, which follows the course from the first tee to the ninth, with the club's presidents, teams, caddies and characters along the way^13,42. After the great storm of February 1925 he was out on the trails again with his camera, and gave the money from his storm photographs to the fund for repairing the town's streets and trails⁵⁰. A second album, made for the editors of the Record, shows the work of repairing the ninth green⁵¹. The Record's golf column is silent about any damage, so the album is our only record of it.

The land around the club was changing. In 1922 Mrs. Hugh A. Boyle prepared to put the family's land on the market, and the Record noted that "a new road is to be put through the land, opposite the Golf Grounds"⁵². In August 1928 Country Club Manor went on sale, "those beautiful wooded rolling sunny hills and knolls adjoining the Mill Valley Golf and Country Club"⁵³.

For now the canyon still felt like the country. The 1929 season opened with the course in perfect condition, and the column was sure "there are few more beautiful spots in Marin County or even California"⁵⁵. That fall about seventy people came to a Hallowe'en party in the clubhouse on November 1, 1929⁵⁶. The Record's reports from the club that autumn are about teas and parties. They say nothing of hard times.

A Club in Lean Years

The Mill Valley Country Club began the 1930s at its annual meeting of June 10, 1930, where the members made John F. Forbes president. Forbes had kept the club's books since 1919¹.

On the course the decade opened with a win. In the spring of 1930 the home team took the first round of the Marin County Cup with 639 strokes, against 667 for Marin and 692 for the Meadow Club, and the locals were "first to admit an advantage of knowing their barrancas"². Those barrancas, the deep creek gullies that cross the fairways, would be argued over in public eight years later.

The club did not stop improving the course during the Depression. Bermuda grass went in on the fairways in 1931, and in 1932 the members added larger greens, new trees and bridges, and a new seventh green³. The man in charge was Frank Assin, the club professional, who also kept the grounds^4,3.

The trouble was the membership. In February 1933 the directors let properly sponsored players aged sixteen to twenty-one in for $1 a month, and those aged twenty-two to twenty-five for $2, with no initiation fee³. By June the initiation fee was waived for everyone, and the club was frank about why: "Due to the death of several of the members; and the fact that others have moved from Marin County the playing membership list of the club is at the present time below normal"⁶.

Those changes turned the club toward young players. Tamalpais High's golf team already played on the Mill Valley links, and in May 1930 it won its second straight North Bay League title there, led by its captain Cyril Donaldson^7,8. In 1933 Sid Heller, the team's No. 1 player, made a hole-in-one on the second hole that the Chronicle called "one of the longest holes in one ever recorded in California"⁹. A few weeks later the team won the club's first county title "in 11 years"¹⁰. In November 1937 eighteen-year-old Mary Elizabeth Swearingen won the women's championship of the club¹¹.

"Precarious": The Offer to the City

On December 17, 1937 the Record reported that the directors had been talking privately with city officials for months. "Precarious financial position of the club was chief reason for consideration of the plan to make the club a municipal project—financed, owned, and operated by the city." Recent years had been "difficult ones, with a great loss in membership transferring the load to a few"¹³. A week later Mayor T. F. Bagshaw wrote that the directors wanted the property kept "available for use of the public, rather than to have it pass into private hands for other purposes," and that any agreement would go to the voters as a bond issue¹⁴.

On January 5, 1938, the directors offered the course, the clubhouse and all their holdings to the city for $25,000, asking that it be kept up as a golf course¹⁵. On February 2 the council took an option at that price¹⁶. The members had put more than $48,000 into the property, which was worth about $40,000, and the 42 acres would be paid for with $25,000 in bonds retired "out of current income"¹⁷.

For four weeks the Record printed letters for and against. Ernest K. Little argued that a new course anywhere else would cost at least $50,000¹⁹. A skeptic replied that the course was simply hard: "A deep ditch crosses every fairway except the first"²⁰.

The Record's editorial called the grounds "this piece of paradise" and reminded readers that more than ten of the 42 acres were not used for golf at all²².

On April 12, 1938, the bonds won 844 to 512, short of the two-thirds they needed. The Record explained the defeat in one sentence: "They feel that only a few play golf and these few should provide their own links," and warned that the tract might now be subdivided²³. It was not. In May the members gave the city a new option, with six monthly warrants of $350 to keep the turf alive, so the club could "carry on in the face of threatened shutdown," and with "no restrictions of any sort" on the land's use²⁴. A new election was called for January 17, 1939²⁵.

The second campaign was about parks, not golf. "Not like before," the Record wrote, "there are absolutely no strings on the property"²⁶. This time the bonds carried, 820 to 327, with every precinct but one giving more than two-thirds²⁷.

The People's Course

The council named a park commission chaired by Carl Fennema, with old club hands such as Sedgley Jory among its members, and Frank Assin and his wife Doris stayed on²⁸. On the morning of March 3, 1939, the city attorney recorded the deeds in San Rafael, and the Mill Valley Municipal Golf Course opened the same day, with Assin as manager and Mrs. Assin running the clubhouse²⁹. Green fees were 50 cents on weekdays and 75 cents on weekends³⁰.

"The course begun and maintained for the amusement and recreation of a few, has become a public fairway for all Mill Valley."

The work started at once. Within two months crews had put in 7,538 man-hours clearing brush³². On Easter Sunday the city hid 1,440 eggs on the course^33,34.

Mayor Bagshaw formally dedicated the course and park on Sunday, June 4, 1939, before "a good crowd at the clubhouse," while the Tamalpais High drum and bugle corps drilled on the fairway^35,36.

In the dedication tournament Cyril Donaldson, probably the same player who had captained Tam's team in 1930, was medalist with a 65, and on June 25 he won Mill Valley's first municipal championship^37,38. The old club had "gone out of existence," and golfers formed a new men's Mill Valley Golf Club in its place³⁹.

Running a public course did not pay at first: March through May showed an operating loss of $914.30⁴⁰. But games more than tripled by August, and Assin reported an unexpected result: "About 80% of the golfers on our Mill Valley course now come from outside the city"⁴¹.

The decade ended with an old problem left over from the club years. Ben Upham, the club's president in the early 1920s, still held a right to cross the course to his family's land, and in December 1939 the city attorney proposed a 40-foot road along the park's northwest edge to replace it⁴². That road belongs to the next chapter.

When the 1940s opened, the City of Mill Valley had owned its golf course for less than a year, and the first report card was sobering. From March through October 1939 the course had cost $7,029 to run and taken in $2,320.¹ Frank Assin, who had been manager and pro under the old private club, stayed on as a city employee, while Mrs. Assin ran the clubhouse.² His problems were not grand ones. Seventeen cattle strayed in from the Tunnel ranch, and "the happy kine wandered aimlessly and expensively across 5 greens and 3 fairways."³

The politics were harder. In July 1940 Councilman G. V. Griffitts reminded the council that "when city golf bonds were voted the people were told that the course would be self-sustaining," and he raised the prospect of closing it.⁴ The auditor found that over its first sixteen months golf had brought in $4,321 against $9,537 of expenses.⁵ Yet by November Griffitts was asking for emergency repairs, with the aim of making the course pay its own way within two years.⁶

Help came from the golfers themselves. A new Mill Valley Golf Club, with dues of $1 a year that all went to prizes, grew from 15 members to 140 by January 1941.^7,8 The Record praised it for filling the city's links and doing the taxpayers a public service,⁹ and income rose 50 percent in 1940.¹⁰

That June the road out front changed for good. A city grader and a county power shovel cut a much larger parking area out of the bank along Buena Vista Avenue, made possible by a land swap with Joseph Simmons:

"20 feet extra width was added directly in front of the clubhouse, where old concrete steps were partially torn out by the widening."

For months afterward the clubhouse front sat broken. In November the council voted $610 for emergency work, beginning with new steps and a retaining wall.⁶ In January 1941 rain stopped the masons partway through the new wall of blue rock.⁸

Meanwhile the city was trying to get a different road off the course. Ben Upham of Ross held a right-of-way through the middle of the fairways, and a first deal for a bypass collapsed in February 1940 when Ida Boyle walked out of a council meeting: "I didn't ask you for this project, you asked me!"¹² It took the rest of the decade. A road along the northwestern side of the park was deeded to the city in December 1947 and annexed in January 1948, ending "the need for a right-of-way down the middle of the golf course."^13,14

A wartime course

In January 1942 the war reached the clubhouse. It had no blackout shutters, so night rentals stopped, and caretaker Andrew Younger renumbered the holes to reduce confusion among strangers.¹⁵ Noncommissioned servicemen played at half price,¹⁶ and the American Legion later counted "at least 40 or 50 enlisted men per week since Pearl Harbor."¹⁷

Many regulars had gone into the armed forces or defense work, but more than 5,000 players still signed the register in the eight months to June 1942.¹⁸ The staff turned over with the war economy: the Assins left in 1941, and their successor, John M. Foge, left in 1942 for the Bechtel shipyards.^19,20 Prizes were paid in war stamps.²¹ A 13-year-old, Al Nelson Jr., beat the veteran Del Taylor for the Forbes trophy in 1943.²² A serviceman wrote home that "it's really the old guard that is keeping the interest rolling."²³

Full tee sheets

Peace filled the course. By July 1946 it was "taxed to capacity on Saturdays, Sundays and holidays," and a new Golf Commission set weekend starting times.²⁶ Receipts rose from $3,348 in 1942–43 to about $8,800 in 1945–46.²⁷ The goal set in 1940 was met within the decade. In August 1948 City Manager Ted B. Adsit reported that "the golf course is self-supporting, proceeds for the year totaling $12,680."²⁸

The clubhouse was where the quarrels happened, over beer and wine and over hall rents.^29,30 On the course, Neil Colburn, a former Midwest PGA champion, became pro and starter in 1948,³¹ and the Record praised his patience with beginners.³² Bill Mason took the 1948 club title with 11 birdies in 29 holes.³³ A year later Earle Blennerhassett beat him, and in the afternoon round "coolly made 10 threes" in 11 holes.³⁴

The women had organized in October 1940, playing Wednesdays at 9 a.m., with dues of $1.³⁵ Their star was Helen Hanna, who won the 1944 North Bay championship at Sonoma.³⁶ Through all of this, people still called the building the Mill Valley Country Club.³⁷ By 1949 only two courses were left in Marin: Mill Valley's nine and the Meadow Club.³⁸

A sign for the highway

Twice in the decade, signs pointed the way to the course. In 1940 National Youth Administration workers put up green wooden signs cut in the silhouette of Mt. Tamalpais.³⁹

In 1948 the city and the Locust Merchants association raised money for a neon sign on Highway 101 at Manzanita, and the Record pictured vacationers with clubs in the trunk stopping for an afternoon of golf.^40,41 In December, however, the state ruled that "the phrase 'Municipal Golf Course' will have to be deleted," because it would set a precedent for advertising.⁴²

When Walter Ratcliff's clubhouse was planned in 1919, its porch was to look out over the course "with the first tee and the ninth green directly in front of the club house."¹ Thirty years later Buena Vista Avenue ran through that view, and drives from the first tee and approaches into the ninth green kept landing on it. In 1951 the city began shifting the tee and green east "as a safety precaution to eliminate the possibility of balls being driven into cars," cutting the fill from the hill beside the clubhouse and leaving room for a 50-car parking lot.² The men's club "did not favor the change" and took a "wait-and-see" attitude, while play went on over the old holes.³ A few weeks later the greenkeeper, Joe Penders, was raking the ninth-green trap when a ball came down on his head and knocked him to the ground.⁴ The new hole finally opened on April 4, 1954, with the course's first grass tee at No. 1, and the old ninth green was kept for practice.⁵ Even so, crossing between clubhouse and course stayed risky: in 1964 the city engineer, surveying a footpath to the clubhouse, was hit on the jaw by a golf ball.⁶

The clubhouse stayed on its hill. In April 1955 the Record welcomed visiting North Bay officials with its picture and a long view of the valley from Mt. Tamalpais.⁷

The hill was the problem. In 1956 the pro, Malcolm Brown, asked to move his shop down beside the first tee, since every golfer, about 1,000 a week, had to climb "some 50 to 75 feet of rather steep stairs" to sign in and out.⁸ The council agreed, and that November the new redwood shop opened "at the first tee, across from the clubhouse."⁹

For the next decade the city could not decide what to do with the half-empty old building. In 1958 Alex Almcrants proposed selling it; Councilman Peter Behr objected that "if it was sold we'll never get back the value."^10,11 Commissioner Joe Brewster found the Rotary, the PTA, the Women's Golf Club and others all wanted it kept, even at a loss.¹² So the city patched it, with a new roof in 1960, but the men's club still complained of "the best and most beautiful golf course in the country, but the poorest facilities anywhere."^13,14 By 1965 the caterers had quit again and the Women's Golf Club president called the kitchen and restrooms "a health menace."^15,16

Houses on every side

The land around the course was filling up. In 1952 James H. Scott announced Scott Highlands, 54 lots at the mouth of Warner Canyon, and that May a five-year dispute with the Boyle heirs ended with a right-of-way across a corner of the course and about 90 acres of their land coming into the city.^17,18 Twice the city even considered selling the course for houses. "Someday someone is going to build an 18-hole course in Marin," Almcrants warned in 1952, "and where would our 9-hole course, buried in the hills, be?"¹⁹ Neither plan went further, and in 1959 the council refused to sell even a scrap behind the fourth green.²⁰

The houses sometimes helped: in 1956 the city took 18,000 cubic yards of free fill from homesites above the third tee to smooth the course.²¹ By 1960 the nine holes in Warner Canyon were "now surrounded by residential development."²²

Penders, the pros and the players

The man who kept the course going was Joe Penders, parks superintendent since 1949.²³ In 1958 his crews laid a new sprinkler system themselves for about $10,000 in materials, against a $26,000 contractor quote. "It's the beginning of the end of fairways littered with hose," he said.^24,23 Mechanic Jim Mundell built a mower-sharpening machine from a clothes-dryer motor and junkyard parts.²⁵

The tees were still "frame-and-mat" platforms, and most golfers wanted to keep the ditches as a "challenge."²⁶ That New Year's Eve a barefoot football kicker set his ball on one of those mats to take on Malcolm Brown, football and big toe against regulation clubs; the Record is silent on who won.²⁷

Penders's run ended badly. In 1963, after the golf clubs complained about spending cuts, he was demoted to greenskeeper, and in 1964 Brown took on the course as chief greenskeeper.^28,29

The course was short, about 4,578 yards for eighteen holes at par 67, but hard, with "innumerable hazards, such as deep ditches and trees."^30,31 In 1952, on the nationwide "Beat Ben Hogan" day, the pro Bud Fisher shot a 62 against Hogan's 71.³² The course hosted the Marin County Amateur each spring and, from 1955, a city championship that drew more than 200 entrants by 1957.^33,34 Juniors got as much attention: boys' and "Little Golf" tournaments, free junior lessons, and in 1965 juniors in the club championship for the first time, where Jim Brown was medalist with a 63.^35,36,37,38

Epilogue

The newspaper record ends in the mid-1960s, and the library's photographs carry the story only a little further. One shows the clubhouse interior after a fire on November 12, 1975, when "arson was suspected"; another, from 1977, shows the bare framing of a "Performing Arts building at Mill Valley Golf Course" after another fire.^39,40 The records do not say more, and this history will not guess.

The clubhouse survived. A photograph from January 1991, taken where Buena Vista Avenue meets Country Club Drive, about where a photographer had stood around 1924, shows the second tee with the first and second greens beyond.^41,42 In December 2016 the library photographed it from the foot of its steps, its terrace windows still giving "a grand view out over the golf course," with the pro shop, the first tee and the ninth green across the road.^43,44,45 It is still the city's course, public since March 1939.⁴⁶

When the city took over, the Record wrote that a course "begun and maintained for the amusement and recreation of a few, has become a public fairway for all Mill Valley."⁴⁷ The neighbors built right up to its edges and the city twice thought of selling it, but it stayed open. In 1920 the Record had marveled at golf on "what six months ago was a cow pasture."⁴⁸ Nearly a century later that pasture is still a public course, open to anyone who wants to learn the game.