Walla Walla, Washington, is an odd sort of tourist destination. It’s not near any major city (three hours from Spokane and four from both Portland and Seattle), and it doesn’t boast an outstanding natural attraction like a lake, ski slopes, or the Pacific Ocean. But it’s an appealing place—an offbeat college town with a growing wine industry—so in 2008, John Thorsnes, the pro at Walla Walla Country Club, joined with businessman Jim Pliska to purchase a swath of farmland outside the city and turn it into a golf course worth traveling to play. They hired architect Dan Hixson, fresh from his project at Bandon Crossings, a favorite among Bandon Dunes staff. Along with shapers Kye Goalby, Dan Proctor, and Brian Cesar, Hixson crafted a collection of friendly, naturalistic golf holes. Since opening in 2009, Wine Valley has remained somewhat under the radar, even though it’s a contender for Washington’s best course, public or private.
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Take Note…
Loess. During the Ice Age, glaciers shaped Wine Valley’s landscape by depositing fine, silty soils called loess. As Earth warmed and the ice melted, wind and receding waters formed the broad, smooth, treeless slopes on which Dan Hixson laid out golf holes 15 years ago. As Tad King and Rob Collins recently discovered at Landmand Golf Club, built on similar but larger-scale topography in Nebraska’s Loess Hills, loess makes a good foundation for a golf course. It drains well, can be shaped readily, and produces landforms and vegetation that remind golfers of natural duneland. Wine Valley’s soils are also ideal for farming. The Walla Walla area has long been a hub of onion, apple, pea, and wheat production, and over the past two decades it has gained a reputation for its Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, and Syrah wine grapes. The surge in wine tourism partly influenced Wine Valley’s developers in believing that an upscale daily-fee course would thrive here.
Alfalfa Valley. Both of Wine Valley’s nines wind around large agricultural plots, which many visitors might mistake for vineyards. In fact, these fields are planted with alfalfa, a signature crop of the Walla Walla area.
College town. Walla Walla is home to Whitman College, an esteemed liberal arts school that dates back to 1859. The campus is beautiful and close to many intriguing restaurants, tasting rooms, parks, and other places to spend time. Add in a round at Wine Valley (and maybe one at Walla Walla Country Club, which looks decent), and you have an underrated weekend getaway for Portland, Seattle, and Spokane residents.
The Hood. If you drive to Wine Valley from Portland, you’ll pass through a town in the Columbia Gorge called Hood River. It’s worth taking a little detour here and checking out Hood River Golf and Country Club, an affordable rural course with nines built in 1923 (by H. Chandler Egan) and 1995 (by a considerably less architecturally proficient club pro). The land is—and I don’t say this lightly—wild.
