This article was provided by the Convention and Visitors Bureau for the Village of Pinehurst, Southern Pines, Aberdeen area.

In 1895, only barren and forbidding dunes welcomed those few who visited the Sandhills of North Carolina. Herds of wild boar were the dominant inhabitants.

Thick forests of mighty Carolina pines once dominated this thin slice of sandy hills that separate the clay-based North Carolina Piedmont from its coastal plain, defined by the Pee Dee and Cape Fear rivers.

But the earth had been stripped, the wood harvested for timber and tar by-products, leaving a ravaged and lonesome landscape. Detractors referred to the region as the "Sahara of North Carolina." Seemingly worthless.

Fortunately, Boston philanthropist James Walker Tufts saw in this the perfect site to build a health resort that would be a haven for New Englanders escaping their own bitter winters.

Tufts had heard of the marvelous healing virtues of the dry climate and the sandy soil, of the therapeutic values of the longleaf pine tree, and he long remained enchanted with the sweet fragrance of the pine.

He was impressed, as visionaries are, by the beauty that nature, man and time would restore to the area. He recognized the worth of the year-round temperate climate.

Tufts purchased 5,000 acres of stripped timberland for about $1 an acre. Many thought him a grand fool while he assembled architects, engineers, planners and workers to build his resort and create a New England village on his North Carolina land.

Tufts was not without a master strategy in selecting his site, only a few miles west of the Boston-to-Miami train line — the same one he came to town on — and not quite a full day’s train ride from New England.

His resort opened with a modest hotel, a store, boarding houses and cottages. Tufts was fast to react to new technologies and new ideas, quickly introducing such devices as electric lights and telephones in his town and resort. After all, he made his first fortune selling soda fountains.

Who better to imagine Tufts’ own village than the men who created New York’s Central Park? Tufts brought Frederick Law Olmsted to shape the Village of Pinehurst around its own village green.

Tufts started a tree-planting program that began with 220,000 pine seedlings, and over the next three decades he raised more than 350,000 pines, restoring much of the area to its one-time sylvan radiance.

Recreation was important to visitors, and Tufts provided a variety: horseback riding, hunts, tennis, trapshooting, croquet, bicycling and later archery. Many of these are essential to today’s Pinehurst-area lifestyle. Tufts himself preferred roque, a game much like croquet but played on a hard surface.

Of course it was golf that brought the grandest recognition and tradition to the Village of Pinehurst — and with an ironic introduction.

In 1898, a disgruntled village dairyman approached Tufts to complain that hotel guests had begun intruding in his pastures with waist-high clubs to strike little white balls. These people were, after all, disturbing his cows.

If Tufts enjoyed one moment of genius above all others, it was his decision to accommodate his strange guest activity — even if it was to protect his dairy investment.

The same year, he hired Dr. D. Leroy Culver of New York to lay out a nine-hole golf course, which was expanded to 18 shortly after.

This pastime-turned-passion soon required full-time attention; and Tufts hired a young Scotsman, Donald J. Ross, who had apprenticed with Old Tom Morris at St. Andrews, to develop golf at Pinehurst.

From a handshake agreement, Ross administered the development of golf not only in the Pinehurst area but also, to a degree, across the North American continent.

Ross spent 48 years at Pinehurst designing and reshaping the resort’s first four golf courses and more than 400 others throughout the North American continent.

In the beginning, his work at Tufts resort was basic: Take care of the golfers and the golf courses. As golf became the resort’s mainstay, the Pinehurst Golf Club was established (in 1903) and a small wooden clubhouse was built near the site of the current one.

Tufts immediately ordered a redesign of the initial layout and planned more … and more … and more. Ross redesigned Pinehurst Golf Club’s No. 1 Course five times, the famed No. 2 Course six times, his No. 3 Course twice, and the No. 4 course four times. Many of his original holes were abandoned throughout the property.

Ross was prolific at home as well as abroad. He designed four courses in nearby Southern Pines in seven years: Mid Pines in 1921, the first Southern Pines Golf Club course in 1923, Pine Needles in 1927 and the second Southern Pines Golf Course in 1928. Mid Pines and Pine Needles were partnerships of the Tufts family and others attracted to the area.

The complexes at Mid Pines and Pine Needles represented not only the manifest outgrowth of the good life and golf into the Sandhills area surrounding the Village of Pinehurst but also the good times enjoyed by the Tufts with the village, now a place to be seen by the well-heeled — those who played golf and those who did not.

Former President William Howard Taft (recently identified as a most avid, although not quite adept, golfing president) visited, intrigued by the golf. So did the Rockefellers, duPonts and Carnegies, many riding their Pullmans on the main rail line to nearby Southern Pines and parking at the Village of Pinehurst siding.

Ben Hogan won his first professional golf title on the Pinehurst Resort and Country Club No. 2 Course in the 1940 North and South Open. The PGA Championship was played on No. 2 in 1936 to celebrate Donald Ross’ conversion of the course’s greens to grass from sand. Ross’ ultimate course also was host to the 1951 Ryder Cup Matches and the 1962 U.S. Amateur.

Life in the Village of Pinehurst among sporting’s famous was not limited to golf. Bill Tilden won the first North and South Tennis Open in 1919. Annie Oakley taught shooting — in classes as large as 800 — after she and her husband moved to the village in 1916. She also acted in the Pinehurst Theater in the village. Bing Crosby visited Pinehurst frequently — and often never picked up a golf club. He enjoyed riding and shooting nearly as much as his golf.

The Village of Pinehurst and its surrounds suffered from the Depression. The Tufts lost both Pine Needles and Mid Pines when times were bad in the early 1930s.

Golf and the Pinehurst area found their own again in the 1960s. Mid Pines and Pine Needles were under new and separate ownerships and growing.

Ellis Maples, who learned golf course architecture and construction from his boss at Pinehurst Golf Club, Donald Ross, became a sought-after designer in his own right.

He created courses for the Country Club of Whispering Pines (1959 and 1970), Whispering Woods Country Club (1974), Pinehurst Resort and Country Club’s No. 5 Course (1961), The Country Club of North Carolina (1963), and Woodlake Country Club (1971).

The eighth and ninth decades of the Village of Pinehurst lured most of the era’s leading course architects to the area, each attempting to leave his imprint in the sands where Donald Ross conceived his best works but also providing the area with a rich divergence of design styles.

As they came, surveyed, laid out and built, each architect (no matter how big his reputation before coming to the Pinehurst area) knew his work would be compared, ultimately, with that of Donald Ross. Many paid homage to Ross’ genius in their creations and in their words.

Those who have left their brand in the area include Jack Nicklaus (Pinehurst National Country Club), Tom Fazio (Pinehurst No. 6, Pinehurst Resort and Country Club’s Centennial Course No. 8 and Forest Creek Country Club), Rees Jones (Pinehurst No. 7 and Talamore Golf Club), Arnold Palmer (Pinehurst Plantation), Gary Player (Pinewild’s Holly Course), and even Jack’s son Jackie Nicklaus, whose first U.S. design was outstanding (Legacy Golf Links).

Noted architects Gene Hamm, Tom Jackson and Willard Byrd designed several other area layouts.

Another of Pinehurst’s own sons came into his own as a golf course architect. Ellis Maples’ son Dan, as a young lad, worked in construction and design with his dad and slowly developed an interest of his own in this endeavor. Dan built his reputation designing beach courses.

Dan returned home to build The Pit (1984), Longleaf (1989) and Little River Farm (1996). He owns the first two of his area layouts.

Several of these new courses were built as stand-alone public facilities — then without membership or accommodations, following the early success of non-membership courses such as Hyland Hills (1973).

The Pinehurst Resort and Country Club itself underwent changes in the early 1970s when the Tufts family sold the resort and land to the Diamondhead Corp. Club Corp. of America bought the property in 1984 and has carried the resort into its second century.

As Pinehurst Resort and Country Club Director of Golf Don Padgett notes, "A visitor can’t spend a day anywhere in the Pinehurst area without feeling the sense of history of the place. It’s unique to this area, and we are all aware of its importance. It’s a part of our golf and part of our lifestyle."