Elks 797 Golf Club

About the club

The original golf course was built by Wayne F. Cox. Mr. Cox had built a motel on the southeast corner of his farm on route 22 & 3. His wife Mildred managed the motel and Mr. Cox built an 18 hole course mainly with his own labor. He had some professional architectural help in laying out the course. Two lakes were constructed and a two hundred foot steel machinery building erected with the east side open to serve as a covered driving range area. Cox purchased a large tree transplanting truck and moved several hundred evergreen trees from an old planting several miles from the course. These trees were as large as could be moved by the truck planter and soon gave the course a feeling of some maturity. The first nine holes were opened to the public in 1960 and work continued on the other nine holes. The eighteen holes utilized most of the farm and covered about 145 acres. By 1980, business and housing development posed a threat to the golf course. Wayne Cox was ready to sell his properties and Robert Webster, a native of Lexington, Kentucky, was making plans to purchase. Webster was doing business as D’or International and had moved to have the major acreage rezoned for housing and business. His plans had been submitted in December 1980. To save a public golf course for the community, the trustees of the Elks 797 Lodge, located adjacent to the golf course, decided to try to save the original nine hole course. When the trustees contacted the National Office of the Elks, the local trustees were discouraged from buying into the course because Elk lodges with golf courses generally had poor experiences in development and operation. Reluctant to miss the opportunity to keep a community golf course, the Lodge asked local members to purchase the nine hole course and hold it until some Elks entity could raise funds for the purchase and operation. Two Elks families, Ernest and Wilda Wilson and Joseph and Naomi Shaw, purchased the nine holes from Wayne and Mildred Cox. The purchase included 82 plus acres and a fraction of the upper lake, the driving range and the 200 foot metal building and machinery on the course.