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Today, if you stand exactly on the spot from which this photograph was taken, you will see a sliver of road and a dark mass of evergreen trees. The trees, an ambiguous gift from a New York State environmental program aimed at making every acre it bought "forever wild," mask the view of the church and the hill beyond. Most dramatically, they blot out the site of one of the valley's great beauties and pleasures from the turn of the century till forty years ago: the 9-hole Beaverkill Golf Course.

On the late summer afternoon this picture was taken, the 1st tee was in silhouette at near center, with the church beyond. At right behind the mailbox, and just beside the 9th green, stood the comfortable small house of Frederick W. Banks III, crack golfer and for many years proprietor of Trout Valley Farm. Directly behind the photographer was Trout Valley Farm itself, its main house a rambling 25-room, multi-gabled structure with a spacious verandah on which fashionable guests gathered after supper, or sat in shadow during the day idly watching golfers tee off. Fred Banks's house, the inn, the huge barn, and the outbuildings that lay between the inn and what is now Kate Adams's house, are gone. But today, just by the road, you can still find the remnants of the 1st tee, its crumbling, square fieldstone shape mostly hidden by brush. Some other tees may be found as well in those places around the course where the trees are not impenetrable.

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A view back towards the golf course and Trout Valley Farm from the road above the Covered Bridge, today’s Berry Brook Road Spur.  The golf course is out of sight to the right. Enlargement

"Three times a day a bell called guests to meals.
You could hear it all over the valley..."

[Ed. Note: In his account of Trout Valley Farm, written in 1952, proprietor Fred Banks decided to skip "the last thirty years." He "considered this span of years too recent to be classified in a historical light." But in many ways, and especially the decades just before World War II, those years were the golden age of Trout Valley Farm and its golf course. It was a time when many of the same families gathered year after year in Beaverkill as guests and neighbors until--as this affectionate account by Bill Sharpless of the thirties and forties makes clear--the valley became a nostalgic heartland, the site of something not unlike an extended family.]

View from the barn (with church beyond) shows the inn's many gables and outbuildings. lt had 18 bedrooms, smallish but with high ceilings. Baths were down the hall. The dining room and guest lounges, plus the kitchen, took up the ground floor. Guests rented by the week or the month. Enlargement

As early as 1896, the magazine Country Homes, published by the O & W Railroad, described Trout Valley Farm as follows: " 6 miles from Rockland station; accommodates 50; house new; broad piazza; open fireplaces; wide halls; ample shade; maple grove near house; croquet and tennis; pure spring water in house; no malaria; no mosquitos; cool and healthful; wild and delightful scenery near house; good fishing in Beaverkill River and tributaries; all of which are trout creeks; excellent partridge, rabbit, woodcock and fox shooting; good livery; M.E. Church on farm; table liberally supplied with eggs, milk, maple syrup, chicken and products of the farm; will meet all trains on notification. Telephone connection with Western Union Telegraph free" By 1903 Country Homes could add: "toilet and bathrooms," which were down the hall, the glen and "the Beaverkill golf grounds, with its natural bunkers and hazards; grounds kept in good order; a fine flock of sheep may be seen quietly feeding on them . . ."

Jay Davidson, shown here in 1919, created the inn (first known as Davidson's Hotel) then a golf course, its fairways initially groomed by sheep. He owned much of the valley, but profitably raised, sold, and rented out teams of oxen to farmers all over Sullivan County.

Forty years later the inn had more rooms. There was very little fox shooting that I remember, but the above descriptions were still pretty accurate in 1936, the year my parents bought the Shea and Enger houses from Millard Vandermark. The Shea house (he calls it the Gordon/Sharpless house) is where Fred Banks stayed in 1910 and 11. Fred also mentions the property when he refers to the sheep getting into the garden of Aaron Ackerly who was the original builder of both houses. The third green was located toward the church but right next to our house. The fourth tee was right in front of our driveway. From the front of the house you had a beautiful view of the golf course and the river, with Kinch's hill, then mostly open pasture with a solitary tree on top. Whence its local name "Lone Tree Hill," a name that no longer applies. Today the hill itself is grown up with trees; trees along the road block our view of it.

Frederick W. Banks III ran Trout Valley Farm for 40 years after buying it in 1922 from founder Jay Davidson. Here, seated by the 1st tee and wearing a proper golfer's costume of the early 1930s, he looks every inch the gentleman innkeeper and scratch golfer that he was. Enlargement

In the thirties and early forties, the golf course was much used. In addition to the guests at the hotel, many local families played (the family seasonal golf rate was $50). Most of my family played golf. Both parents, myself, my younger brother, Teddy, and all six of our younger sisters. Perhaps because the 4th tee was practically in our yard--we always started a round from there-–a time came when both my mother and my sister Sally (seven months pregnant at the time) made holes-in-one from it. But when the family moved into the Beaverkill house, my brother and I had never played. We soon acquired a motley collection of old, mostly hand-me-down hickory-shanked clubs. It was easy to find golf balls. We loved hunting them in the rough along the fairways and even across the brook in the woods at left of the 4th and 5th fairways. We also hung around at matches, watching older guys. Sometimes carrying their clubs if they'd let us. The Simpson brothers who were older, Dave, Ronnie and Bruce, were great golfers and they helped us a lot.

The motley collection of clubs that Teddy and I had generally included a niblick (like a 9-iron), a mashie niblick (like a 7-iron), a mashie, like a 5-iron, and a mid-mashie, like a 3 or 4 -iron, probably a 3. After a year or so I got hold of a really old wooden club, probably a "spoon", equivalent to today's 3 or 4 wood. I sawed five inches off the shaft then (moment of inspiration!) got an old file and filed the face back quite a bit, to change the angle and give it a lot more loft. The first great feat that kids learning golf in Beaverkill aimed at, was to get up the hill from 3rd tee to the 3rd green, up and over the road where cars could be passing. A pretty short hole but obviously requiring a lot of height. With that newly remade wood I was up and over on the first try. Amazing! Thereafter I cherished it. Gave it a new coat of varnish and managed to keep it in pretty good shape until, sadly, I outgrew it.

Heart of summer pleasures included a plunge into the cool, deep waters of the Golf Links Pool, or lounging on the grassy banks beside it. The fairway of the 6th hole ran less than a hundred feet back from the river, but guests often preferred this site to the pool at the covered bridge.

Par for the Beaverkill course was 31. Its longest hole, until a shift in the riverbed cut it back to 250, was 303 yards. The course record was 27. I never saw anybody equal that, let alone break it. My best score ever was 34, which came years after I passed the next challenge for aspiring Beaverkill golfers. That was to be able to drive from the 1st tee up onto the plateau below the church, where the 1st green was located 240 yards away. It took a good drive, 200 hundred yards or more. As kids we couldn't do it. But eventually we did. The first time I hit it up the hill to that plateau, I really thought I was some golfer.

End of summer ritual, the Beaverkill Valley open golf tournament, closed with a commemorative group photograph. This one, circa 1934, included Helen Collingwood (at center, head turned to left) and daughter Betty, back row second from right.

The Simpsons are the Beaverkill golfers I remember best. Every summer their parents rented the Huske house (now owned by Stuart Root). There were so many others. I often played with Lee Hartwell, whose family had just built a house on Miss [Marion] Tobey's land at Clear Lake. The Collingwoods (Helen, the doyenne of Beaverkill golfers, and her children, John, Kerr and Betty) who lived in an elegant log cabin between the 9th fairway and the river, were always on the course. So were Fred Banks and his family. Fred, the owner and pro, and his children, beautiful Bonnie Banks with the beautiful swing, young Margot Banks, then just beginning to play -- later to become many times Delaware County champ-- Janie and Jimmy Edwards (Mrs. Banks's children by her first marriage). The youngest, Freddie Banks (Frederick Banks IV) had then not yet started to play. Everyone who played was fond of Russell Osborn and ( after his death) his brother, Kenneth and wife Ethel who inherited the property now owned by Stephen Levy. There was also Newman Wagner (mentioned as a star pitcher in Fred Banks's article) , Tim Loizeaux, Sr. and his wife, Flo, Bill Whitehill and Jack Durland, who was more of a fisherman than a golfer.

When Davidson’s sheep were still the main means of shearing the grass, golfers often left the gate open as they crossed the road on their way to the 3rd green, letting the sheep escape. So Fred Banks’s grandfather invented this lift up folding gate that automatically closed by gravity. Enlargement		Tiggy and A. Wilson   Note how the gate frames a barn.  This barn was on what is today's Berry Brook Road spur, and before the current entrance to the campsite office.  Behind the barn is Lone Tree Hill. Enlargement

For years there were matches for the local championship between Beaverkill and Debruce, which used to have a tiny but sporty up-and down course (now sadly departed) beside the Debruce Inn (also long gone). The rivalry ran out after awhile, but I remember that in one of my dad's matches, his Debruce opponent blasted his first drive way past the 240-yard 1st green and far up the hill beyond it. They were searching for it even as far away as the gravestones on the side of the road opposite the church! Pretty intimidating. But the guy proved wild, and my dad won handily. Several years ago Freddie Banks, Fred's son, presented me with an old score card of my father's when he played in a championship at Debruce.

Every year, too, there was a big open tournament for Beaverkill people who often played on the course, particularly hotel guests. Regulars invited to play . My brother and I got to play. It was a lot of fun, with a party afterwards and a group picture taken beside the 1st tee. Fred Banks tells of a celebrated clerical foursome including two bishops. That was before my time. When we moved there, though, Bishop Howden, the Methodist Bishop of Arizona, New Mexico, and southwest Texas, used to come every year with fairly large family. They took over the entire annex for a part of the summer.

The view from the Camp Site on the far side of Golf Links Pool shows the church above the golf course, and the width of the valley between church and river, with field and woodland beyond. Trout Valley Farm included 300 acres, providing food and fuel for guests and livestock. Enlargement

The Howden whom all the kids in the valley remember best was the Bishop's son John. He had a game leg, but was a terrific swimmer and a terrific games player and entertainer of kids. Often, after dinner was over at the inn, and grown-ups retreated to bridge or rocking in the porch twilight, children of guests, and neighbors like us, gathered round him in the big front room to play everything from the "I Like Coffee but I don't like Tea" game to "In Cahoots."

Mr. Banks kept fairways and greens mowed, but trimmed the roughs only a few times a summer. The rough had grass seven, eight, nine inches tall, almost impossible to blast your way out of, even for grown ups . In 1942 and 43 I worked for him for 25 cents an hour, mowing greens and hoeing gardens. You cut the greens with a hand-propelled mower. It had a heavy roller. On a hot day it weighed a ton. Doing the nine greens was a day's work. Banks also had a big corn patch on the river side of the course between his house and the Collingwoods' which I helped hoe, as well as helping him repair tees and fences. For years Trout Valley Farm really was a farm, with multiple vegetable gardens to feed the guests, a huge barn, cows, pigs, chickens, horses and, until the war, a farmer

This hefty catch, notable enough to be preserved on film, was not all that unusual for anglers at the inn as late as the 1930s. Back in the 1890s, you could take an unlimited number per day, but by 1934 the daily limit was ten, at least 7 inches long.

It was then, when help was harder to get, that I worked for Fred. Among other things he took advantage of a state offer to provide low-cost seedling pines. One day-–a blazing hot day--we spent all afternoon setting out dozens of the tiny pines out along the river bank between the Collingwood cottage and his house. As we were finishing here came my tiny baby sister (Sally Shea now; she of the eventual hole-in-one) calling out "Billee! Billee! Look at all the pretty little plants I just picked!"

The inn had one of the largest barns in the county, able to store hay from the fields above, plus stables and sheds for wagons, also used for square dances and eventually guest cars. In spring, all the hard maples had sap buckets attached so Fred Banks could boil syrup in his sap house up by Glen Brook. Enlargement

Fred turned purple. He looked as if he was about to explode. But he was a kind man and said very little. Of course, every seedling had to be reset. For a number of years we had several horses that we kept in Mr. Banks's pasture behind the church. From time to time the horses would get out (my sisters swear that the pinto could open the bars of the gate) and invariably they would run onto the golf course, frolic on the first green and run into and wreak havoc in Banks's cornfield. Fred Banks would then drive up in his old wooden station wagon to tell us; my brother and I would then have to go round up the horses. It got so that when my mother, cooking breakfast in the kitchen, saw Fred's car approaching, she would groan and say "Oh, No! Here comes Fred Banks again!"

Many of the golf course fairways often lay alongside each other, and they dipped down or up here and there. One day I was about to drive off the 8th tee when I saw Bruce Simpson coming my way. He was playing the 7th hole but was straying into my fairway. I got out a light practice ball–woven, about the size of a golf ball but capable of being hit only about 20 feet. Just as Bruce came over brow of a little hill, I hit it right at him. He yelled and dropped to the ground. He was a much better player–and a much bigger kid. But he was a friend, and to my relief he took it as a joke.

A view from Trout Valley Farm, across the road and the river, up to the Berry Brook Road Spur with Lone Tree Hill behind it.  The barn is situated next to today's campsite entrance. In the foreground, what looks like a fireplace is a carriage mounting block with the steps in the back.  The golf course is just out of sight to the left of the house, which belonged to Fred Banks.  In fact, the 9th hole ended smack against the other side of the house. Enlargement

Another time I was playing Lee Hartwell. On that day sister Sally, age 7, and Margo Banks, who at age 6 was a little tease with a great little sense of humor, were carrying our clubs. Margo carrying Lee's. Sally carrying mine. Margo found a dead sparrow. "What shall I do with this? " she asked me. "Shall I put it in Lee's bag?" "Great idea!" I said, so she slipped it in and we promptly forgot about it. A week or so later I was playing Lee, and he kept complaining about a mysterious smell on his hands. That morning, he said his hands were really smelling bad. He kept sniffing them. After nine holes he went home for lunch. So did I. We were to meet at the 4th tee for the next round. When we met Lee told me how he had scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed the smell clean off. Still, even then, it didn't strike me what the trouble was. But after a bit he started complaining. "I can't believe it. That smell is back on my hands. And my hands are slimy."

So at last he shook out the bag. There were the remains of the dead bird. "I wonder how a dead bird could get in my golf bag," Lee asked. "Oh," I said. "Probably flying south, got tired and fell into the bag." Lee was easy to kid but he never quite believed that.

This photograph shows the inn, with its verandah on the left, after Jay Davidson expanded the already large farmhouse that belonged to his father, Thomas Davidson, whose brother built the covered bridge. Enlargement

The oddest match I recall was when Tim Foote, from Clear Lake, bet he could beat me around the course by throwing the ball rather than using clubs. He could throw a golf ball about a hundred yards and most of the holes were fairly short. He figured he'd always be straight to the pin, as well as deadly on the greens. As he has just lately reminded me, "You were a great golfer, but the game being what it is, there was a chance you'd land in the rough." As he likes to remember it, the match was pretty much nip and tuck, because early on I did get into the rough, but he fell well behind on the long 6th. Who knows? Sixty years later, the outcome is irreparably (and happily) murky.

A later view from the front of the inn showing the long verandah and large cupola with its many rocking chairs. The inn served three meals a day to up to 50 guests, for whom the weekly rate was about $5 to $8 around the turn of the century. By 1950 the weekend fee was $15 and included five meals.  The carriage mounting block is clearly visible on the right. Enlargement

Besides golf, and such gags as the above, there was square dancing, horseback riding, (Mrs. Banks was a dedicated rider), tours up the glen, which had (still has) spectacular waterfalls. Along the way you could inspect Fred's sap house in the midst of a mini-forest of sugar maples where each winter and spring he made syrup for use of the guests. And, of course, lazy summer swimming in the cool Beaverkill. Until New York State acquired the land for the Campsite in 1927, Fred Banks's guests swam in the deep pool under the Covered Bridge. But when that was developed and started getting crowded, they began swimming in the golf links pool. It was, and is, quite long, maybe 150 feet and at the upper end up to eight feet deep. It had a nice grassy bank, about five feet above the water level, for the 6th fairway was kept mowed right up to the pool's edge. It was a great place to sun and swim. Fred Banks, though, had a continuing battle with the Camp Site over the pool. The property line ran down the center of the pool. Fred owned one side, the state owned the other. State authorities didn't want campers--or anybody else--to use it. They wanted swimming safely confined to the Covered Bridge area.

The site of the 3rd green may be seen in this view from the churchyard, taken in 1911. The sheep gate is across the road. The nearest house has belonged sucessively to Aaron Ackerly, Millard Vandermark, Dr. Sharpless, and now Sally Shea.  The sheep gate can be seen at the right across the road. Enlargement

When Fred continued use his half for his guests, frustrated Camp Site authorities finally ran a wire right down middle of the pool. Fred had it removed, and we kept on swimming.

Fred Banks had given Mr. Collingwood permission to build a cabin and lease it for years, the ownership eventually to revert to Trout Valley Farm. Fred had also built an attractive summer rental house on the hillside above and to the left of the church which was occupied for so many years by the Hova family that it was universally known as "the Hova House." The two distant cottages had minimal kitchen facilities. So, three times a day, when the bell called guests to meals, you could hear it all over the valley.

In 1943, Janet Sharpless (left) and a young friend let Janet's horse graze placidly beside the road, just opposite the 1st tee. At right is a corner of Fred Banks's house. The 9th green is hidden behind the horse.

Both houses were destroyed, along with all other Trout Valley Farm buildings when, in the 1960s Fred found himself with no alternative but to sell the place to the state, and the state made it "forever "

It was in the fall of 1963 that I played my last round of golf in Beaverkill. It would have been a sad affair. I had long since written my Assemblyman asking why the golf course couldn't be saved by making it a public facility, and part of the Camp Site. (He never replied). Fred had already sold the place. But by good fortune, I was playing with my future wife. She was then a golfer named Frances Anderson. It was our first date. So I don't remember whether or not I drove the 1st green.

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