{"id":298213,"date":"2026-07-16T23:00:06","date_gmt":"2026-07-16T23:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/298213\/"},"modified":"2026-07-16T23:00:06","modified_gmt":"2026-07-16T23:00:06","slug":"without-a-sale-or-redevelopment-a-former-ny-state-prison-is-wasting-away","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/298213\/","title":{"rendered":"Without a sale or redevelopment, a former NY state prison is wasting away"},"content":{"rendered":"

WOODSTOCK, Vt. (WCAX) – These days, you can see almost every hole of Woodstock Country Club driving along South Street, but the course\u2019s birthplace is just north of today\u2019s track, in a now-wooded area on Mount Peg.
\nIn 1895, Dr. Francis Harrington came from Boston to the Woodstock Inn for a two-week stay with his golf clubs looking to play – but there was a problem.
\nThere really wasn\u2019t anywhere nearby to play.
\n\u201cHe convinced the manager of the Inn, Arthur Wilder, to take him up into the cow pasture on top of the ridge and show him how you play the game,\u201d local historian and former land surveyor Bob Holt said. \u201cSo they did that, and they soon developed quite a following of people that were interested in the game.\u201d
\nFrom there, things moved pretty quickly.
\n\u201cThat fall, just a few months later, October of 1895, they founded the Woodstock Country Club,\u201d Holt said.
\nThe first holes were on that hillside cow pasture, using tomato cans as holes and livestock to cut the grass. At the start of the 20th century, the course moved down onto flatter ground. Wayne Stiles laid out the original 18-hole plan in the 1920s. A few different iterations later, and in 1963, renowned architect Robert Trent Jones designed the north-south layout that exists today.
\n\u201cThe Jones name in golf runs really deep, it\u2019s definitely a draw for us as one of the oldest golf resorts in the country,\u201d WCC director of golf Matt Closter said.
\nWoodstock is one of just two RTJ courses in the state of Vermont (he designed Sugarbush two years later). Jones played a part in designing some of the most iconic courses in the country, including Spyglass Hill, Congressional and the Olympic Club. He also redesigned the iconic 11th and 16th holes at Augusta National Golf Club. The full listing of his designs can be found here.
\nAmong those that have spent time playing at WCC is Woodstock native Keegan Bradley. The 2011 PGA champion was around often in his childhood, hopping off the school bus and onto the course.
\n\u201cThe golf professional at the time, Jim Gunnare, used to have him hit balls from the roadside back into the range so they could pick up the range, and then Keegan would get to play the golf course,\u201d Closter said. \u201cI know this is a special place for Keegan as it is for all of us. And gosh, Woodstock just loves cheering for Keegan Bradley to see what he\u2019s done.\u201d
\nWCAX last chatted with Bradley during the 2024 Presidents Cup in nearby Montreal, where he reminisced about growing up just a few hours away:
\nWhether it\u2019s the 2025 Ryder Cup captain learning the game, or a doctor on a two-week vacation itching to play, Woodstock Country Club has lived through three different centuries of golfers and counting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WOODSTOCK, Vt. (WCAX) – These days, you can see almost every hole of Woodstock Country Club driving along…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":298214,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[9,11,10,49,51,50],"class_list":["post-298213","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-new-york-state","tag-new-york-state-headlines","tag-new-york-state-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298213","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=298213"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298213\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/298214"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=298213"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=298213"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=298213"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}