Anchoring a 930-acre county reclamation project on the shores of Puget Sound near Tacoma, Chambers Bay, site of the 2015 U.S. Open, sprawls across the floor of a giant maw that bears the scars of a century of industrial mining. The treeless site did not have the sort of undulations formed by wind and receding tides, so Robert Trent Jones Jr. used bold landforms left behind by decades of gravel extraction as “scaffolding” for his prodigious links. Reclaimed sand, glacial till, and industrial detritus was fashioned into huge fescue-covered hills that simulate dunes. The 40-foot-high, diamond-shaped concrete sorting bins located beside the 18th fairway are a reminder of the site’s commercial past.