F&H Golf Course

F&H Golf Course began as one man's dream. In 1968, Willard Hart took up golf and asked a simple question — why couldn't there be a course near Haxtun? In April 1972, Willard, Everett McConnell, and Bud Grauberger sat down over three cups of coffee and started planning. They were soon joined by Henry Hulse, Delmar Kennedy, and Dallas Hopkins — six men with a dream.

Virginia Parker leased the group 80 acres of grassland south of Dailey for $400 a year. Everett McConnell drew up the plans, and the nine-hole course was staked out by hand. The first greens were sand: thirty-foot circles cut into the native grass. The tee boxes were strips of car tires wired together. Logan County let its workers haul sand from Sterling to the course each night on their way home. Ninety yards of sand cost ninety dollars.

That first year, green fees were one dollar for nine holes, family membership was twenty-five dollars, and the course collected $95.35 from forty families. The course was out of debt within a year. On March 5, 1973, the club bought the land outright — eighty acres, a two-story house, a granary, and a well — for $9,000.

In 1987 came a new dream: grass greens. Course builder Marty Johnson formed the greens and tee boxes, and the rest was done by the community. Neighbors hauled dirt and sand, dug trenches, laid pipe, welded, mowed, and seeded — most of it donated. Tournaments, an auction, a raffled golf cart, and plain old-fashioned solicitations paid the bills. The grass greens opened in 1988.

A golf course professionals estimated would cost over $300,000 was completed for roughly $90,000 — the difference made up entirely by donated labor and materials. By 1999, F&H had grown to 150 members. Today it remains a true eastern Colorado experience: a 9-hole public course built, and still cared for, by its community.