The Crosby Club At Rancho Santa Fe history

Juan Osuna died in 1851, just one year after California became the 31st state in the union.

Some 20 years later in 1871, the United States confirmed the provisional land grant in the name of Juan Osuna’s widow, Juliana Osuna.

In the early 1900’s Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway Company purchased 8,796 acres on which to cultivate more than one million Australian eucalyptus seedlings for the manufacture of railroad ties.

Bing Crosby was born Harry Crosby in 1903.

In 1906, the railroad planted hundreds of thousands of eucalyptus trees as an experiment to produce timber for use in rail lines.

However, the railroad spikes split the eucalyptus lumber, and the AT&SF abandoned the operation in 1916.

The Santa Fe Land Improvement Company renamed their development project Rancho Santa Fe in 1921.

The plan for the Village was refined in 1922 by the architectural firm of Requa and Jackson, who assigned a little-known architect named Lilian Rice to lead the project.

Around that time, SFLIC began the process of transitioning the remaining ownership and management activities to a nonprofit corporation, and in July 1927 the Articles of Incorporation for the newly formed Rancho Santa Fe Association were first signed.

The Protective Covenant was formally adopted in 1928 by the Rancho Santa Fe Association.

The first of these clambakes was held at Crosby’s local club in Rancho Santa Fe in 1937. (Sam Snead won the tournament and pocketed a princely $700 for the victory.)

The “Clambake” was held annually through 1942.

In 1944 he won the Oscar for his leading role in Going My Way.

In 1960 the Association was asked by its membership to restrict the use of the golf course to Association members only and to lease the golf course operations from the Association.

The Association agreed to restrict the use of the golf club to Association members only and in 1978 added the ownership of covenant property as a condition of membership.

The Rancho Santa Fe Association took over operation of the golf course in 1934 and operated it for 25 years as a public facility. It was not until 1987, that the Rancho Santa Fe Golf Club was established as a division of the Rancho Santa Fe Association with managerial, operational and financial responsibility for all golf activities.

In 2000 a Short Game Practice Area was created in conjunction with expansion of the Driving Range, giving Rancho Santa Fe Golf Club one of the finest practice facilities anywhere.