area, Quaker Meadows in Morganton, and a host of Myrtle Beach area courses such as Ocean Isle, Possum Trot, Robbers Roost and Cypress Bay. Broyhill figured he now had room for 150 fairway lots. The course would have been modeled after the Boone Golf Club: it would be open to the public, but it would have memberships. He took his bulldozer, which he loved to play with, and roughed out 14 of the 18 holes. Then Broyhill suffered a major setback. His lake had an earthen dam, but beavers had built their own dam that blocked his drainpipe. A stream of water fed by Boone Fork Creek began overflowing the dirt dam and made its way where the terrain took it, which was down to Price Lake on the Blue Ridge Parkway. Because several earthen dams had broken about that time, causing major damage downstream, nervous Parkway officials demanded that the dam be breached and drained. If the dam had failed, a wave of water would have rushed into Price Lake and the recreational area around it. Broyhill cooperated, and at considerable personal expense took out the dam. The lake was drained, and so were his funds to build the golf course. Several years later, Broyhill abandoned his plans and agreed to sell his property to CNL, LLC, the developers of SweetGrass. They have no plans for a golf course, but they did rebuild the dam to make a 22-acre lake. CNL also set aside 100 acres of the property for green space. Broyhill, an excellent golfer who can still shoot lower than his age, reflected, “If it had worked out, I would have loved to be out there on my bulldozer.”
Laurelmor Projected at $75 million Third Most Expensive Course in America
T
he Laurelmor golf course is perhaps the most famous “lost course” in the High Country. The property was part of the Johnson Land Company holdings of 42,000 acres, which originally was timberland for the American Drew Furniture Company based in Wilkes County. The Johnson family’s Leatherwood Mountains was part of the acreage. Twin brothers David and Earl Kaplan purchased 1,500 acres from the Johnson family in 1996 to be the home of the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi-inspired Spiritual Center of America, which they called Heavenly Mountain. The Kaplans added 5,500 acres later to total 7,000. Before the Kaplan purchase, the property was being looked at for a golf course. Richard Gragg from Blowing Rock and Roland Hamner of Gastonia tried to put together a deal to purchase enough acreage from Johnson Lands to build 36 holes—18 public with affordable green fees and 18 private. Bob Spence, who at the time worked with George Cobb, was to be the designer. Spence now works with Davis Love III on his course designs. The deal never made it. The first 1,500 acres at Heavenly Mountain was planed as a nonprofit Transcendental Meditation (TM) spiritual center with Mother Divine and Purusha programs designed for the development of consciousness and “radiance of bliss.” This segment
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High Country Magazine
August 2010
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