Nine holes, par 34: York County's first golf course
In 1894 Grier Hersh laid out a private nine-hole course on the Springdale estate, the first golf course in York County, on ground that is now the neighborhood's streets.
Golf came to York in 1894, and it came by way of Springdale. That year Grier Hersh laid out a private course on the estate, the first golf course in York County: nine holes, 2,281 yards in all, par 34.
It was a different game then. Players carried wooden-shafted clubs and struck gutta-percha balls, which the neighborhood’s history says could be driven only about a hundred yards.
The course began at the alley just south of Springettsbury Avenue and ran south almost to Rathton Road, east to what is now Sleepy Hollow Road, and back north along the lines of today’s Newlin and Arlington Roads. Some of today’s front lawns were fairways first.
Hersh was among the founders of the Country Club of York, and of the Lafayette Club. In 1941 he presented a plan of the original Springdale course to the Country Club. When the neighborhood’s history was written, an extensive search of the club’s files had failed to find it.
If that plan ever turns up, in a drawer, an attic, or an archive, the association would love to see it.