Grand View Golf Course Ad – August 20, 1965

It’s interesting how golf is generating so much interest on this blog recently.

On Friday’s post about the former Spring Valley Golf Course, a reader named Todd asked about a Par-3 golf course that was located on Lake Road next to the old Roman Villa restaurant. He noted, "You paid in what in what I think was an old gas station and they gave you a club and two golf balls for your round. 

"The short holes if I remember correctly, went behind the station and Roman Villa's parking lot and maybe a motel. My uncle took me there when he was teaching me how to play. That would have been in the late 60’s.”

Regular blog contributor Rick Kurish provided a good answer. Rick wrote,"Although I do not personally remember the par 3 golf course you mentioned since I was not in the area during the 1965 to 1969 time frame, I did run across an ad for the course a couple of years ago.

"In the C-T of August 20, 1965 was an ad for the new Grand View Par 3 Golf Course. It was advertised as the only course in Lorain County that was lighted for night play and was located at 4881 West Erie Ave., between the Grand View Motel and Roman Villa Restaurant.

"I wondered how a golf course could have existed in such a small space and your description of the layout of the course explains it. I'm guessing that the course was a short lived attraction, since I drove by there every day in 1970 without noticing it.”

Here is the Chronicle-Telegram ad from August 20, 1965 that Rick mentioned.

As Rick noted, the course wasn’t there very long. It first appeared in the 1965 Lorain Telephone Company directory, and was gone by the time of the 1967 edition.

Here’s an aerial view of the Grand View Golf Course circa 1969, courtesy of the Historic Aerial website. You can kind of make out where the holes were located.

Today the former golf course is home to apartment complexes accessible from Fulmer Drive.

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Vintage Arnold Palmer
Putting Courses sign
(Courtesy flickr)

For a little while in the 1960s, that stretch of West Erie Avenue was apparently a haven for golfers. 

A little bit to the west of Grand View on the same side of West Erie Avenue was the Arnold Palmer Putting Course at 5007 West Erie. It first appeared in the phone book in the November 1963 edition. 

But it too was gone by 1968. (Today, an apartment house complex occupies the location.)

Perhaps the Arnold Palmer Putting Course suffered from the same handicap as Grand View Golf Course, being just a little too far out there in-between Lorain and Vermilion – and inconvenient to get to for residents of both towns.