In the collective American
mind, a principal characteristic of the Midwest is flatness. Regions of Michigan and Minnesota to
the north or the Ozarks to the south form exceptions, but most of the Midwest is strictly on the level.
For golfers, this conjures
up Midwestern resort courses dependent on water hazards for definition and
bulldozers for their elevation changes. In historic Galena, Illinois, however, Eagle Ridge Resort and Spa
stands as an anomaly. The landscape here is one of very few in the region where
Ice Age glaciers failed to steamroll everything flat. Caverns, hills, bluffs and
valleys remain intact, creating scenery reminiscent of the Pacific Northwest,
New England or the
Mid-Atlantic.
A three-and-a-half hour
drive from Chicago, Galena is tucked in the Prairie State’s northwest corner. Founded in the
1820s by lead miners and steamboaters who plied the Mississippi, Galena’s era of greatest prosperity came in the
1860s. That’s also the period when it served as home base for Union general
Ulysses S. Grant, who moved to the town in 1860 to help run his family’s leather
goods store.
More than 100 years later,
Galena entered a period of rebirth as a vacation spot for Chicagoans, with an
old-fashioned Main Street full of restored Italianate and Greek Revival
buildings (85 percent of which are listed on the National Register of Historic
Places), small shops and cozy restaurants. A walk through town takes visitors
past the Desoto House, a 150-year-old hotel where Abraham Lincoln once gave a
speech from the balcony overlooking Main Street. The Desoto’s famous guests
included Abe’s rival Stephen Douglas and William Jennings Bryan.
Eagle Ridge, founded on a
preserve known as the Galena Territory, opened its first course in 1977. Over
the next 20 years, the resort expanded to 63 holes, all designed by Roger
Packard. At Eagle Ridge, Packard took whatever the terrain had to
offer, incorporating limestone cliffs, natural bodies of water and tree-studded
valleys into his layouts.
