The Casper Municipal Golf Course

Casper Wyoming has four golf courses, the Municipal course, the Paradise Valley course, Three Crowns, and the Country Club.  Of those, two are private courses, those being the Paradise Valley course and the Country Club.  The newest course is  Three Crowns, which was put in where the old Standard Oil Refinery once was.

I'm not a golfer.  I did learn how to golf when I was a kid, but for whatever reason, interest in the sport never took with me, and I was of junior high age when I quit.  My mother was, at one time, a fairly avid golfer, and we have an old trophy she won here in town when she first moved here, from a Pan American Petroleum tournament.  She taught me how to golf on the Municipal Course, which was fairly close to our house.  Anyhow, in spite of having one parent who really loved golfing, I gave it up. The sad thing is that my mother basically gave it up at the same time as well.  I'm not really sure why, but she did.

Anyhow, the City of Casper recently hired some consultants to look at golfing in Casper, as the Municipal Course is loosing money.  The preferred option, according to the consultants, is to close the course.

I think this is a terrible option.

The theory behind this suggestion, as one city council-person put it, is that Casper is"over golfed". With four course, for a city of this side, it probably is.  But only one of the courses is really cheap to golf at, and that's the city course.  Of the four courses, moreover, only two are public.  One of those, Three Crowns, borders on being a very end, and therefore expensive, course.

Additionally, it's constantly noted around here that Casper is "growing".  If this is true, and for the time being it is, its foreseeable that a day will arrive when Casper is not "over golfed".  This is particularly the case given that two of the four courses are owned by clubs, and while the club ownership is very longstanding, by nature private clubs are less long lasting than municipal clubs.  There's no public interest, or ability, to keep a private course up and running, and since World War Two private organizations of any kind have had a history of diminishing interest.  Moreover, both of the private courses are in areas which have seen a lot of real estate development in recent years which is wholly independent of their existence, and at some point you have to wonder if developers start looking at that acreage and start making offers.

And beyond that, while I'm not a golfer, golf courses make for nice open ground in urban areas, and this is particularly the case with the municipal course, which is between Casper College and Allendale, on the Mountain Road.  It'd be a shame to fill that area with houses, which is what would occur should the ground be sold.  Having some open areas, even in a region that has a lot of open country, makes for a nicer city.

Granted, the city is loosing $250,000 per year, which is bad. But that was perhaps inevitable when Three Crowns was built.  That Tree Crowns was built was a good thing, given that the land was virtually incapable of any other use, but that this would cause a loss to an existing facility should have been expected, and is not really attributable to a fault with the older, Municipal Course. The city should keep it up and running, and I'm fairly certain that the residents of Casper will regret it if they do not.