Miami Springs Golf & Country Club
THE MIAMI SPRINGS GOLF COURSE
Prepared by: Yvonne Shonberger - Miami Springs Preservation Board Member
Golf was originally started in Miami with a six-hole course around the Royal Palm Hotel in 1897. In 1898 Henry Flagler opened the Miami Country Club along NW 11th Street and 12th Ave along the Miami River. The course was a nine-hole course and was accessible from the Royal Palm Hotel by boat or a twohour journey along a dirt road. James Bright and Glenn H. Curtiss became partners in land development and the Curtiss-Bright Ranch Company was incorporated January 27, 1921. On December 30, 1922, the corporate name was changed to the Curtiss-Bright Company.
In 1921 the Curtiss-Bright Ranch Company was developing the City of Hialeah. Mr. Curtiss envisioned an adjacent community to the west of the Miami Canal as a planned residential community. The plan for the community included wide boulevards, large single-family residential lots, with stringent building and zoning laws and a golf course. The Curtiss-Bright Ranch Company began clearing the land in Country Club Estates, (City of Miami Springs) around 1922.
A group of golfers known as the Miami Coconuts were without a course to play on. The Miami Coconuts did not have a clubhouse, held no regular meetings and in fact they only owned golf clubs. The group would meet in downtown Miami at the Martinique Hotel. It was in the hotel that H. B. "Dickie" Martin started the Miami Coconuts and its membership consisted of almost every golf-minded resident of the City of Miami.
The group was a who's who of the Miami scene at the time, consisted of:
- Roddey Burdine (son of William Burdines founder of Burdines department Store)
- Tub Palmer, Fred D. Breit,
- Newt Lummus, Jr., J. E. Junkin,
- Carl Fisher, Bill Urmey,
- Frank B. Shutts, Rowland Saunders,
- Everest Sewell, Webb Jay,
- Morrie Orr, Paul Scott,
- John Carlisle, Frank Pepper,
- S. P. Robineau, Oscar Daniels,
- E. C. Romfh, Bill Burnett,
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