The Flint Golf Club
The Flint Golf Club Crest
The Flint Golf Club, Incorporated September 17, 1910
So many of the Flint area’s most venerable venues share common ancestors. From the old churches, to the early factories, parks, schools, street names and even city streets, you see many of the same names again and again. Some of the names may not even be familiar, but they usually have some local significance: Raskob, Dupont, Chevrolet, Buick, Durant, Mott, Longway, and of course, Dort.
That is certainly true of local civic and philanthropic organizations and clubs, including local golf clubs. But none have a background more steeped in tradition and history than the Flint Golf Club. On September 17, 1910 a charter was granted by the State of Michigan to the ‘Flint Country Club’. Behind this charter stood J. Dallas Dort, the first genuine “Mr. Flint’.
His partnership with William C. ‘Billy” Durant, had created the Flint Road Cart Company in 1886, which then morphed in to the Durant Dort Carriage Company. Later, the Durant Dort company, and both Durant and Dort themselves personally, would be the prime movers and shakers behind moving Buick to Flint, reimagining and reinventing the company, leveraging it in to General Motors, and subsequently creating Chevrolet, among many other subsidiaries large and small like AC Spark Plug, and Frigidaire.
While Durant was making moves in New York and manipulating markets and money, Dort stayed home in Flint managing affairs behind the scenes. However, everyone locally knew if you needed something done right and quickly, and with some authority behind it, Dallas Dort was the man you looked for. Dort was behind so much civic good that it’s not possible to even touch on it in this story, however, suffice to say when it came time for fun he was as strong as he was when it came to business.
So many of the Flint area’s most venerable venues share common ancestors. From the old churches, to the early factories, parks, schools, street names and even city streets, you see many of the same names again and again. Some of the names may not even be familiar, but they usually have some local significance: Raskob, Dupont, Chevrolet, Buick, Durant, Mott, Longway, and of course, Dort.
That is certainly true of local civic and philanthropic organizations and clubs, including local golf clubs. But none have a background more steeped in tradition and history than the Flint Golf Club. On September 17, 1910 a charter was granted by the State of Michigan to the ‘Flint Country Club’. Behind this charter stood J. Dallas Dort, the first genuine “Mr. Flint’.
His partnership with William C. ‘Billy” Durant, had created the Flint Road Cart Company in 1886, which then morphed in to the Durant Dort Carriage Company. Later, the Durant Dort company, and both Durant and Dort themselves personally, would be the prime movers and shakers behind moving Buick to Flint, reimagining and reinventing the company, leveraging it in to General Motors, and subsequently creating Chevrolet, among many other subsidiaries large and small like AC Spark Plug, and Frigidaire.
While Durant was making moves in New York and manipulating markets and money, Dort stayed home in Flint managing affairs behind the scenes. However, everyone locally knew if you needed something done right and quickly, and with some authority behind it, Dallas Dort was the man you looked for. Dort was behind so much civic good that it’s not possible to even touch on it in this story, however, suffice to say when it came time for fun he was as strong as he was when it came to business.
J. Dallas Dort
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The Flint Country Club in Atlas
So it was that in 1910 Dort headed out to the Medbury farm near Atlas to lay out nine holes for the first Flint Country Club golf course. If you had a car you could access via rough roads in 1910, or take the Flint and Detroit Interurban trolley system, directly to the Club. By 1915 those nine holes had been snapped in to a first-rate golf course, complete with bunkers by none other than the Golf and Greens Club Chairman, J. Dallas Dort. Today, the course is part of the Atlas Valley Country Club. If you’ve ever played there, you can see the remnants of the old Interurban railway banks by looking west from the 8th green or 9th fairway. It was a beautiful course, funded by 39 original founders at $500 each, a considerable sum in 1910. Among those founders was, Dort, E.W. Atwood, James Whiting, William Patterson, Charles Bonbright (sales manager at Durant Dort and later with Buick/GM), William Ballenger, A.G. Bishop, and John Carton, Durant’s and later Buick/GM’s corporate attorney. |
