Club History

“To facilitate and encourage the development of the game of golf…and to promote social and friendly relations among its members…and to provide for their amusement, recreation and entertainment.”

-Certificate of Incorporation of Longview Country Club, 1925

Longview Country Club owes it’s origins to Longview’s founder Robert A. Long and the Long-Bell Lumber Company’s ambition to build a new planned city.  Company officials, many of whom belonged to clubs in Kansas City, determined that Longview needed its own golf club.  As early as August 1923 land for a course was set aside at the base of Mount Solo.  However, that location seemed too remote so a hillside site, closer to town was substituted.

But golfers couldn’t wait.  Following the example of other golfing pioneers who introduced the Scottish game to this country, they laid out a temporary nine-hole course in a flat pasture bound by Pacific Way and Ocean Beach Highway.  A substantial house across the street was rented as a clubhouse.  The course was short, rough, and an easy place to lose balls, but it was well used, even after Weyerhaeuser built its railroad through the middle of it.  Anyone who could clear the railroad track with his tee shot on the first hole had a good drive.

Founded on July 15, 1925, Longview Country Club soon set about building nine holes above what was then known as Hillside Acres road.  Led by President Kenneth F. Park and Vice-president Tom M. Foster, the club retained an architect, and hired its first golf professional, Jack Rogers who supervised construction.  The course opened April 30, 1927.  Just prior to that in 1926, the new clubhouse was completed thanks to the help of Robert A. Long.  Though not a golfer himself, Mr. Long was quoted as saying that a golf club would "make an impressive picture for the tourists this summer." 

In 1958 nine more holes were built completing the eighteen-hole, 6,215 yard course played today.  Featuring scenic vistas and fast, Annual Bluegrass greens, Longview Country Club has played host to numerous club, regional, and Washington State championships.  Longview Country Club continues to thrill and delight its members as a course “one never grows tired of playing”.

Source:  R.A. Long’s Planned City by John M. McClelland Jr.  See more photos - HERE