Golf Course Information

Description

In 1962, Mark LaGrange was a teacher and coach at Schulte High School in Terre Haute Indiana. He coached not only basketball, but golf, a sport he did not play, but learned by taking a college course. He traveled with his team to a few area golf courses, and out of these meets, hatched a plan. A plan to build a golf course.

Mark was a math teacher, and he needed summer work. He had worked in a factory, on road construction crews, sold insurance, and taught a few courses. But the income from these odd jobs was not enough to support a growing family. So while his wife Pat was teaching elementary school and working on her Master's degree at ISU, Mark would load up his four children in an old car, and drive around the outskirts of Terre Haute looking for suitable land on which to build a course. The land had to be for sale, the right size, with a good water supply, near a major road, and close to the city. He found his dream in a cow pasture between Terre Haute and Seelyville.

Mark and Pat borrowed a down payment from a Tell City bank (with Mark's mother as a co-signer), and purchased the original 21 acres on a ten year contract from Mason and Texie Everman. Both Mark and Pat worked to pay off the land, with one paycheck going to support the family and one paycheck repaying the loan. Mark designed the course by walking the land, using his knowledge of golf and math, and asking for advice from other golf coaches he had met through his work. Pat's father, Ted Denning from southern Indiana, had an old tractor and gas tank from his idle farm that he hauled up to Terre Haute to help in the project. Mark hired high school students and athletes, and neighborhood boys, along with friends and family to help build the course. Some of the biggest projects were building the greens and clubhouse, and getting rid of the wild rose thorn bushes on the property A well witcher was hired, and the water system built.

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