In Search Of Higher Ground

With unmatched grit and grace, a community salvages the historic, flood-ravaged Shawnee Inn -- again

An idyllic setting for the historic course turns nasty when the Delaware River floods.

By Mike Stachura

Photos: Michael J. LeBrecht II/1 Deuce 3

August 10, 2007

When you hear the stories and you see the almost-eerie flood photographs of the nearly century-old Shawnee Inn and Golf Resort, the first thing you wonder is why the people of this place continue to stay. History and natural majesty, of course, are for the most part permanent -- floods cannot really wash them away. But people, let's face it, break down. People, after a time, cut their losses.

The people at Shawnee, home to the first golf course designed by A.W. Tillinghast, are not typical, however. Their troubled slice of the planet has been the host venue to national championships, a major championship and, by many accounts, initiated the idea of a PGA of America. But today Shawnee is trying to overcome its recent, nearly unbelievably unfortunate history. Its people, unbreakable, remain undeterred by photographs that show a golf course as a roaring river, a new practice facility as a lake, a vintage resort hotel like so many lower decks on the Titanic.

"Why am I still here?" Lance Heil, Shawnee's superintendent who has worked under longtime superintendent and now director of golf Steve Taggart through more mess than anybody could imagine, laughs gently at the illogic of it all. Then he answers in terms that aren't about business or a job or calculated risk. He answers with the only words that make sense in the wake of three floods in 22 months, in the wake of reconstructing 65 bunkers three times in that span, in the wake of trying to grow grass after a raging river has left behind silt piled a foot-and-a-half thick across entire fairways and greens. "Why?" says Heil. "I love this place."

Love seems to be keeping Shawnee alive these days, love and muddy shoes and sandbags and a belief in what the place is. It's really the love of a family, both literally and figuratively, and what makes it all so exceptionally compelling is that this isn't any old golf course beside the edge of a river that has run into some bad weather. It is a faded photograph of the history of American golf, and these people are keeping it from being washed away.

The Shawnee Inn and Golf Resort was once called the golf capital of America. Set on the New Jersey-Pennsylvania border on the edge of the Delaware Water Gap, it was conceived by wealthy industrialist Charles C. Worthington at the turn of the 20th century as an escape from New York for family and friends. Climbing over a hill in 1909 while surveying the property with a friend, he discovered an island in the middle of the river. The island would be the site for the golf course, and the friend would be the designer. That friend, Tillinghast, was so moved by the land that he wrote poetry about it.

Tillinghast's 18 holes would be the showpiece for Worthington's famed Buckwood Inn (the name was changed to Shawnee Inn later), and the annual Shawnee Open drew the biggest names in golf, including Harry Vardon, Ted Ray, Freddie McLeod, Alex Smith and Johnny McDermott. At the 1913 tournament Worthington proposed in a letter to the participants that the professional golfers of the day ought to get together and organize their numbers. While Rodman Wanamaker gets credit for the establishment of the PGA of America, an excerpt from the program for the 1938 PGA Championship (held at Shawnee, as well, and won by Paul Runyan in a memorable thrashing of Sam Snead) makes it clear: "It was the thought expressed in that letter that gave the boys the idea of forming a professional association." Shawnee also was host site for a U.S. Women's Amateur in 1919 (won by three-time champion Alexa Stirling) and an NCAA Championship in 1967, won by another legend, Hale Irwin.

Worthington's Inn was built of a unique substance for the times -- concrete -- and the walls were a foot thick in places. (The material would turn out to be, unfortunately, an especially prescient choice.) The resort's purchase by entertainer Fred Waring in 1943 turned the spot into a celebrity hangout for the next four decades and included a controversial-to-this-day expansion and reworking of the course to include 27 holes.

Waring and his group, the Pennsylvanians, would do their radio show from the resort and stars such as Jackie Gleason, Art Carney, Lucille Ball, Ed Sullivan and Perry Como would make regular appearances on the premises. Gleason learned the game at Shawnee, as a matter of fact. Arnold Palmer met his late wife Winnie at Shawnee, and President Eisenhower spent time at the resort, too.

As impressive as that historical timeline is, recent developments at Shawnee are more stunning than any collection of marquee talent. In the last 11 years the Shawnee Inn has been caught in the wrath of the flooding Delaware River five times. Not idle events, this sort of flooding has been record-setting. In 1996 the island golf course was overcome and the first floor of the resort, its boilers, air-conditioning and all mechanical systems were destroyed, literally weeks after a multimillion dollar renovation project had begun. It would be a pattern Taggart and his staff unfortunately would get used to. A decade later Taggart would be digging out from his third devastating flood in less than two years.

"It was just heart-wrenching," Taggart says today, proud not only that he has come through the other side but that the resort is turning a corner. In June 2006 lingering thundershowers dumped eight inches on the region and the island golf course, the first floor of the resort, the recently renovated teaching academy and short course were under water again. Again, the devastation came after renovations and repairs from previous flooding had totaled $2 million.

That's right, previous flooding. In September 2004 the remnants of Hurricane Ivan produced the third-worst flood in the region since 1900. The following April another flood supplanted the Ivan mess as the surging Delaware, which flows normally at a brisk 30,000 cubic feet per second, grew to a devastating pace more than seven times that number. Darin Bevard, an agronomist with the USGA Green Section, visited Shawnee within days. He says it took him an hour just to come to grips with what he was staring at.