Earlier this month I was offered the opportunity to join a group of eight golfer friends – casually known as the ‘Buttheads’ – for their annual trip to a golf destination. (One member was unable to attend – I took his place this year). Each year they select a place that’s warmer and drier than Washington State in the beginning of May, and arrange for a house and a tee time per day. Las Vegas wouldn’t have been at the top of my list; but ‘warm and sunny’ golf sounded really good; so here it is.
Las Vegas is the most populated city in the state of Nevada, and the largest city within the greater Mojave Desert. It developed from its crossroads location along the Spanish Trail leading to California. A young Mexican scout named Rafael Rivera is credited as the first non-Native American to encounter the valley, in 1829. Trader Antonio Armijo led a 60-man party along the Spanish Trail to Los Angeles, California in 1829. The area was named Las Vegas, which is Spanish for “the meadows,” as it featured abundant wild grasses, as well as desert spring waters for westward travelers.
Wikipedia photo showing desert contrasted with surrounding mountains
The year 1844 marked the arrival of John C. Frémont, whose writings helped lure pioneers to the area. Las Vegas is a major resort city known primarily for its gambling, shopping, fine dining, entertainment, and nightlife. It is the leading financial, commercial, and cultural center for Nevada.
Las Vegas seen from the south
This picture may not seem like anything special; but it tells just about the whole story – a big flat desert surrounded by mountains – just add water and freedom and stir. That happened big time in 1931. At that time, Nevada legalized casino gambling and reduced residency requirements for divorce to six weeks. That year also witnessed the beginning of construction on nearby Hoover Dam. The influx of construction workers and their families helped Las Vegas avoid economic calamity during the Great Depression. The construction work was completed in 1935.
In the picture above you can see a big grid of arterials, overlaid with freeways, and developed in a random fashion. This results in an inconsistent juxtaposition of office parks, housing complexes (many walled, gated and including golf courses), shopping strip malls, and public facilities like parks and playgrounds.
We rented a house in Henderson, an in-close suburb of Las Vegas.
It was ordinary – wood frame with stucco walls and a tile roof – but comfortable enough for us to hang out in when we weren’t playing golf – especially for mixing Margaritas, as Jack is demonstrating here.
Out back there was a sitting area between the house and an adjacent rec room building.
This proved pretty popular in the mornings and evenings, when the temperature was pleasant; and it included a 24/7 bubbler fish pond for quiet background sound.
Background sound was something we paid attention to since we had some big birds flying just south of our neighborhood that could be hard to ignore.
A walk around the neighborhood revealed the polyglot development pattern that seems to characterize all of Las Vegas. On many blocks, such as ours, it appeared that there had been development but that it had been removed at some point so that the land was waiting for whatever the next big thing would be. In some areas the desert had been allowed back in, revealing a bit of unkempt beauty.
We joked that we were staying on No Outlet street.
This view also shows a typical arterial – 5 lanes of pavement with narrow sidewalks adjacent to the curbs and lots of power poles – not a lot of fun for walking, though I seemed to be the only one doing any walking. But then in contrast, just a couple of lots away from our place was this home, looking as if it could be in any small city in the US.
Walking on the arterial in the opposite direction, I crossed a drainage channel, apparently very necessary when the infrequent but fast-moving flash floods occur.
Duck Creek Channel
Power lines on large steel poles are also a big feature of the urban landscape. The other side of the channel there were a number of gated multi-family housing complexes, like the Passage and small commercial buildings like the Elixir lounge.
The Passage housing and Elixir local lounge
Across the street from them, tucked into the curve of the road, was a substantial office development for Tutor Perini, a well-known construction company.
Tutor Perini Office Headquarters
And up from that, an economically fragile-looking strip mall shopping center, where a noticeable number of stores were for lease.
One morning I walked in the other direction, initially looking across a lot waiting for development, to an office building waiting for a tenant.
Beyond that, however, were a number of typical Las Vegas housing developments, signaled by the continuous masonry wall and palm trees.
The impression of oasis is inescapable, though the wall in this case keeps out cars and traffic and not sand dunes (farther out of the city there is often desert right up against the wall, though that’s often only until the next development comes along). Everyone arrives at the gated entrance by car.
The housing inevitably continues the stucco on wood stud walls and tile roofs approach. The walls are typically thin; so there can’t be much insulation, and amazingly very few of the designs I saw used shading devices, porches, verandas, atriums or any other traditional method for dealing with the climate. All A/C all the time.
There has been a fairly concerted movement towards desert-sensitive plantings however, in a genuine attempt to reduce water consumption. This includes a substantial number of palm trees (which seem much more like California).
Note the crushed stone ground cover in place of plants or grass – attractive and sensible. And with a moderate amount of water the desert can be a place to grow beautiful plants.
But what about the golf ?
OK, here it is. We played seven courses in seven days, varying from 20 minutes to an hour away. Our trips started out on Patrick Lane – our home base arterial street.
At some point we inevitably drove on one of the many freeways, of which there are many, and many more currently under construction.
Generally speaking the courses were on one side or another of the city where there was more room, and where housing including golf courses could be built. We only played two that were stand-alone courses; the rest were part of housing developments.
I should explain at this point that I don’t have a complete photo story of any of the courses. That takes a lot of time and takes me ‘out of the moment’ (to the degree I can stay in the moment); so the photography tended to opportunistic. I thought what I would do is tell the general story, using pictures from a variety of courses.
Our experience at Rhodes Ranch gives a good sense of how the system generally works, although none of the other communities used a “HOLLYWOOD” style sign to announce themselves to the passing traffic.
Rhodes Ranch – Entry Sign
The entrance sequence oozes oasis with lush plantings
but the gate is pretty formal, starting with the entry structure itself.
Rhodes Ranch – Entry Gate
We had to check in with a guard and confirm our tee time – but that was pretty casual.
The main boulevard through the community continued the lush green environment.
and led us to the golf clubhouse.
Rhodes Ranch – Clubhouse porte cochere
The whole “bag drop” process somewhat contradicts the formal entrance experience.
The idea is to somehow get your bags to your golf carts without bringing the golf carts out to the front curb. (Other courses were more casual about their entrance and let you drop your clubs right where the golf carts were located – or let you drive the golf carts into the parking lot and load directly from your car). Needless to say it seemed odd to be schlepping through such a formal portico.
and then up and down a flight of stairs to the carts.
This particular course offered breakfast or lunch as part of your round of golf; so we had decided to take advantage of the breakfast offer. Group photo opportunity !
Roger Byron Jack Jon Gary Don Bruce
and since I took this picture, Jon took another one so I could be included
Gary Don Bruce Mark Roger Byron Jack
Here, a look at the course, one of the better ones that we played.
Rhodes Ranch – 18th hole
Clearly it takes a lot of water to keep a golf course green in the desert. Many of them treat and recycle their waste water to use for irrigation and many of them also keep their fairways narrow (with ‘waste areas’ along the sides) but there’s still a lot of $$ involved.
So that’s the basic idea. Here are a few highlights from some of the other courses. We first played Painted Desert and got introduced to the waste area concept.
Painted Desert – driveable par 4
On this hole the tee is just a tongue of grass sticking into the waste area where you have to hit over water to a driveable par 4 by hitting around or over the tree in the middle of the fairway (actually not too hard). This next hole also shows the waste area edging the teeing area where Roger takes a whack.
From the teeing area the fairway seems quite generous; but if you get off to the side, the impression can be quite different. It’s hard packed sand and gravel – not fun.
Painted Desert – waste area
Our second day we took our longest drive – an hour to Primm Valley, and over the border into California. There were two courses here, and no housing. It turned out to be a wild desert and electrical environment. Here’s an aerial view.
If you look closely you can see the Nevada/California border and the small town of Primm just on the Nevada side (first casino opportunity coming from California !). The lonesome cluster of green next to I-15 is the two Primm Valley Courses. And adjacent to them on the west side is the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System, the world’s largest solar thermal power plant.
This consists of three arrays of mirrors focusing reflected sunlight onto three towers, or as described in Wikipedia: It deploys 173,500 heliostats, each with two mirrors, focusing solar energy on boilers located on the three centralized solar power towers. And to drive the point home, one of the towers is the visual focus of the first tee (the glowing shape right at the crest of the mountains in the center of the picture below.
The first green is just below the tower (in appearance) to the right of the lake. Nothing like getting started with an ‘easy’ hole. We played the ‘Desert Course’, definitely the more difficult of the two because it brought the waste areas more into play. It’s the upper left group of holes in the close-up below.
But it was also our hottest day (96 degrees) and very windy. Not easy golf. Here are a couple more shots that give a sense of the course and the desert. This is straightforward par 3 but into a 20 mph wind you have to hit it straight to stay out of the water and bunkers. I think I took 2 extra clubs, hit a good shot, and still came up short.
On this other hole the contrast between the course and the mountains is clear.
You can also see that there are lots of bunkers and uneven topography.
Highland Falls Golf Club was a return to housing development golf, in this case a Del Webb community northwest of Las Vegas.
A bit more casual unloading process and a not-common stone architecture.
This clubhouse was organized in a traditional way in the sense that the dining room and its related terrace looked out over the 18th green (across the pond – red flag)
On some holes you do feel as if you’re playing into someone’s back yard.
Highland Falls – 2nd Hole
In other areas, there was pretty good space between the lines of houses and distant views out to the mountains.
In some cases the mountains were much more prominent (though no distraction for Bruce on this par 3).
I also had a good shot here.
We both got our pars on this one.
One day we went in the opposite direction to Chimera at Tuscany, a somewhat tighter course but with a lot of similar qualities. Along the way we got to enjoy some unique desert scenery – a water park along the freeway. Talk about a desert contradiction.
The entry drive here gives a view of the course.
We experimented with ‘playing it forward’ on this course – definitely made it easier to take some of the trouble out of the picture and hit more short irons into the greens. Some of the holes appear to have been aligned with the mountains – this one gave Don an easy target to shoot at.
On closer inspection though, the hand of man hasn’t been able to let go of the desire to own and conquer – with predictable results crudely carving their way up the slopes.
The finishing hole was quite picturesque (except for my hitting the ball in the water)
You can just make out the hazy outline of Las Vegas and the mountains beyond.
Our final day of golf took us beyond Chimera another 20 minutes to Boulder Creek. This was the other non-housing course, again totally out in the desert. They have 27 holes; so you select which two nines you want to play to make up your 18 holes. The entrance view looks back to the mountains.
The clubhouse sits up high – no idea if the hill was here or was man-made.
It’s overlooking several holes and small lakes
We had two foursomes – here the second one finishes up on number 18.
While Roger and Jack from our foursome wait in the cart to see the final result. We played cart-golf all seven days. In the desert environment everyone does. I missed the walking; but for seven straight days of golf it was probably better to ride.
7 rounds, 7 days, high 70’s – what’s not to like.
The next day we headed north (except Jack who lives in Tucson) – past the slots
through the gate
and up into the wide blue yonder above the sprawling Las Vegas suburbs
over the mountains west of the city
and finally, a couple hours later, dropping back down into the reality of the Northwest.
A rainy welcome home !
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