Columbia Edgewater Country Club
Designed by A. V. Macan
History
The story of Columbia Edgewater begins in 1924, when a group of Portland golfers set their sights on a stretch of land along the Columbia River, north of the city, and resolved to build a private club worthy of the region’s growing appetite for the game. The club took its name plainly from its setting — the river to the north, the promise of green fairways beside it — and joined the ranks of Pacific Northwest clubs founded in that era of American golf’s rapid expansion.
The membership turned to A. V. Macan, the Irish-born architect who had settled in Victoria, British Columbia, and built a reputation across the Pacific Northwest for his work on courses from Seattle to Vancouver to Portland. Macan, a former lawyer who had lost a leg in the First World War before turning fully to golf design, brought a routing sensibility shaped by his study of the great links of the British Isles. At Columbia Edgewater, he worked with level river-bottom ground, a departure from the hillier terrain he often encountered elsewhere in the region, and his 1924 design has remained the structural backbone of the club for a century.
Columbia Edgewater has since built a reputation beyond its founding as a private retreat, having hosted LPGA Tour events in the latter half of the twentieth century, bringing professional competition to Macan’s layout and cementing the club’s standing among Portland’s established private courses.
Playing Notes
Bring your driving shoes, not your cart keys mentality — this is a walking course, and the flat-to-gently-rolling terrain along the Columbia River makes that an easy ask rather than a chore. The river's proximity means wind is the club selector here more often than the yardage book, so pay attention to how it's moving before you commit to a number, especially on approach shots into the smaller, older-style greens that don't forgive a club up or down. Mature trees line many of the corridors, narrowing the visual window off the tee even when the actual fairway width is reasonable, so shot shape and trajectory control matter more than raw distance. The greens themselves reward lag putting and local touch over aggressive charges at the pin — expect subtle breaks that are easy to misread if you're playing too fast. Pack layers for the morning air off the river, expect firm, well-maintained turf underfoot, and plan on a round that leans more on shaping shots into small targets than overpowering the course with length.