Eisenhower Park

History

Long before the first tee shot was ever struck on its fairways, the land that would become Eisenhower Park belonged to Nassau County, a sprawling tract set aside for the recreation of the public rather than the pleasure of a private membership. This was the guiding purpose behind the property from the start: golf for the many, not the privileged few, at a time when the game in America was still largely gated behind club walls.

Devereux Emmet, one of the busiest and most respected golf architects working in the New York area during the early twentieth century, took on the design. Emmet had built a reputation designing courses across Long Island and beyond, and his work at what would later be named for President Eisenhower reflected the same hand that shaped numerous clubs in the region — a designer comfortable working the natural contours of Nassau County’s terrain into a course meant to serve a broad public rather than a narrow clientele.

Over the decades since, the property has grown into one of the largest municipal golf complexes in the country, its original Emmet design joined by additional courses to meet the demands of a golfing public that never stopped growing. The park itself took on the Eisenhower name, a nod to the president whose own affection for the game was well known, and the grounds have continued to serve Nassau County golfers as a public inheritance — Emmet’s original routing still doing its work generations after his pencil left the page.