Pine Forest Country Club On North Shepherd Dr.

[IronTiger]

Doing of my "look at something in Google Earth and discover something else" excursions that I do on a far too regular basis, I found what appeared to be a golf course just east of the Sears store there.  It was roughly bordered by North Shepherd (west), the railroad (south), Crosstimbers/Westcross (north), and the homes west of Yale (east). By the late 1970s it was demolished for a series of warehouses with railroad spurs, which it is today, though the spurs are not active anymore. Does anyone know what this golf course was? I tried to do searches on it to no avail.

[Ross]

That was the original home of Pine Forest Country Club, which is now off of Barker Cypress and Clay. A retired colleague grew up on Sue Barnett Drive, just the other side of Shepherd, and would sneak over there and practice chipping and putting until he and his friends got chased off. It was apparently a pretty difficult course, with tight fairways and lots of trees.

 

If you look at old enough aerials, there was another golf course to the West, where Golf Street runs. I don't have anything on that one.

[mkultra25]

6 hours ago, Ross said:

If you look at old enough aerials, there was another golf course to the West, where Golf Street runs. I don't have anything on that one.

 

I remember hearing about this before as well, but don't recall any of the details beyond thinking "so *that's* where they got the street name from" at the time.

[Firebird65]

Aw man, you beat me to it. LOL!

 

I remember going by this course as a kid when we went shopping at the Sears on Shepherd and Crosstimbers. Been awhile since I've been that way, and with news of Sears again closing stores (West Oaks), does anyone know if that Garden Oaks Sears store is still open? According to the Sears website it is, but you never know about Sears. They may have laid all the web staff go. 

[Ross]

1 hour ago, Firebird65 said:

Aw man, you beat me to it. LOL!

 

I remember going by this course as a kid when we went shopping at the Sears on Shepherd and Crosstimbers. Been awhile since I've been that way, and with news of Sears again closing stores (West Oaks), does anyone know if that Garden Oaks Sears store is still open? According to the Sears website it is, but you never know about Sears. They may have laid all the web staff go. 

It was open the last time I went by there a couple of days ago

[plumber2]

2 hours ago, mkultra25 said:

 

I remember hearing about this before as well, but don't recall any of the details beyond thinking "so *that's* where they got the street name from" at the time.

The other one at the end of Golf Drive was what my dad referred to as the Heights Golf Course. He claimed to have caddied there for extra money when he was a kid. It apparently closed sometime around WWII and then it became developed as Sheperd Park Forest later on.

 

I've also heard that the current Pine Forest Country Club on Clay Road is going to close. The members have sold the property to developers.

History has a way of repeating itself. Us native Houstonians have been witness to it more often than we'd like. 

[IronTiger]

15 hours ago, plumber2 said:

The other one at the end of Golf Drive was what my dad referred to as the Heights Golf Course. He claimed to have caddied there for extra money when he was a kid. It apparently closed sometime around WWII and then it became developed as Sheperd Park Forest later on.

 

I've also heard that the current Pine Forest Country Club on Clay Road is going to close. The members have sold the property to developers.

History has a way of repeating itself. Us native Houstonians have been witness to it more often than we'd like. 

Reading about it on the current website of Pine Forest says it opened in 1945 (explaining why it isn't on the oldest aerial) and closed in 1975 (which is why the warehouses were only partially built out in 1978).

[Ross]

17 hours ago, plumber2 said:

The other one at the end of Golf Drive was what my dad referred to as the Heights Golf Course. He claimed to have caddied there for extra money when he was a kid. It apparently closed sometime around WWII and then it became developed as Sheperd Park Forest later on.

 

I've also heard that the current Pine Forest Country Club on Clay Road is going to close. The members have sold the property to developers.

History has a way of repeating itself. Us native Houstonians have been witness to it more often than we'd like. 

You may be thinking of Pine Crest Golf Course at Gessner and Clay, which was sold a while back to MetroNational who then sold to Meritage. There's nothing about Pine Forest being sold. The Pie Crest property may also be turned into detention for flood prevention, since it has flood plain issues that would require lots of fill dirt to raise homes high enough to be above the 100 year flood elevation

[mkultra25]

22 hours ago, Ross said:

It was open the last time I went by there a couple of days ago

 

I think Sears Holdings is focusing on the low-hanging fruit when it comes to deciding on store closures and selecting the ones that are most obviously underperforming. I think the N. Shepherd store still does a decent if not remarkable business - there are always cars in the parking lot, and when I went there with my dad on Thanksgiving evening to buy a washer, dryer, and refrigerator (a significant milestone in the post-Harvey rebuilding of their house), the parking lot was almost full and the store was packed with bargain-hunters, with lines at every register. Granted, that is probably an outlier, but I'd be more concerned with the prospects of any retailer that didn't pack people in on notable sale days like Black Friday, Boxing Day, etc. 

[Steven K]

The golf course near Sears in Garden Oaks was Pine Forest Country Club. My family had a membership. 

Club History

Pine Forest Country Club, established in 1945, was originally located along North Shepherd Boulevard on 144 acres of tall pine tress. Legendary architect John Bredemus built the course during World War II, designing a tight woodsy course that hosted the University of Houston’s All-American Intercollegiate team for 15 years and was host to the 1949 Houston Open, won by Johnny Palmer by just one stroke.

Twenty-eight years after Bredemus completed his development, the club decided to move west of the city since three-fourths of its membership lived in the Memorial area. Paul Wahlberg located 186 acres at 18000 Clay Road, enough land for an 18-hole golf course. The vision however was for 27 holes and was realized with the acquisition of an additional 44 acres. Architect Jay Riviere designed the original 18-hole course, which consisted of the Green Nine and Gold Nine. On May 1, 1975, the facilities at Clay Road were opened only two weeks after the activities at the original location were closed for good. Some 300 trees were transplanted from the North Shepherd course and most of them survived. In 1985, architect Carlton Gipson was hired to add an additional nine holes, now called the White Nine.