Pinehurst & the Sandhills

In 1895, a Boston soda fountain magnate named James Walker Tufts bought 5,000 acres of depleted North Carolina timberland for roughly a dollar an acre. He hired Frederick Law Olmsted to design a village. He hired Donald Ross to build a golf course. The village became Pinehurst. The course became No. 2. The timberland became, over the next 130 years, the most concentrated collection of consequential golf in America.

That history explains what Pinehurst is. This is not a resort that happens to have golf. It is a golf destination that built a village around itself. There is no commercial strip, no chain-restaurant sprawl. Pinehurst Village still follows Olmsted's curving street plan, with a walkable center and the resort campus anchoring the eastern edge. Golf is the organizing principle.