A few days after Flanigan\u2019s rejection at Cherry Hills, another East Denver Golf Club member, Jerome Biffle, made a tee time at Park Hill Golf Club, the daily-fee golf course a few blocks northeast of City Park. Although Biffle and his friends had played the course before, the foursome was turned away this time. After barring Biffle, a local high school teacher and guidance counselor, from teeing it up, the starter declared golf was a \u201cgentleman\u2019s game and we want to keep it that way.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
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Flanigan and Biffle had exposed institutional racism in Denver golf. Their challenge to the barriers placed between them and certain tee boxes was years in the making, and these episodes occurred against the backdrop of civil rights demonstrations by Freedom Riders across the South, which had been constant throughout the summer. However, neither Flanigan nor Biffle was an activist, and it\u2019s unclear if they deliberately set out to change the course of golf.<\/p>\n
![\"Denver](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/denver-east-golf-club-group-photo-1-e1762972863146.jpg\")
A Denver East Golf Club team photo for a 1958 tournament in Springfield, Illinois.<\/p>\n
Flanigan was so intent on following protocol that he ordered his court staff to wear gray jackets, which he purchased for them, to maintain \u201cthe dignity of the courtroom.\u201d\u00a0 <\/p>\n
Biffle, who grew up in the neighborhood, was surely aware of Park Hill\u2019s reputation <\/a>when he crossed Colorado Boulevard to make a tee time, though. \u201cNegros are generally not refused rental of the ballrooms and bars,\u201d an East Denver Golf Club member had written earlier in 1961. \u201cThey patronize the dining hall for lunch, etc., but the course cannot be played.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Park Hill Golf Course was built on land formerly owned by George Clayton, Denver\u2019s largest property owner in the 1860s, a decade before Colorado became a state and a hundred years before Biffle set foot on the property. Clayton amassed his fortune selling clothing, boots and mining equipment on Larimer Square. Upon his death, he left his property to the City of Denver in a trust \u201cestablishing, and forever maintaining a permanent college\u2026[for] poor white male orphan children.\u201d Before it was a golf course, the land was used as a dairy farm, part of the agricultural curriculum for the boys.\u00a0<\/p>\n In 1930, an engineer and stockbroker named Bob Shearer leased the farm from the Clayton Trust, got rid of the cows, and turned the property into a golf course. Shearer, a member of Cherry Hills, hosted a week-long tournament every July that attracted big-name golfers, as well as a six-figure Calcutta: an open auction where gamblers buy into participants. Bob Hope, Bing Crosby and Babe Zaharias all participated in the event, as did heavyweight boxing champion Joe Louis, an exception to the policy that restricted Blacks from playing the course.\u00a0<\/p>\n Flanigan and Biffle had navigated Denver\u2019s spoken and unspoken rules of segregation for decades. When Flanigan founded the East Denver Golf Club, the Denver mayor\u2019s office was occupied by Benjamin Stapleton<\/a>, who\u2019d been number 1,128 on the Ku Klux Klan membership. Stapleton had filled several city posts with Klansmen during his first term<\/a> as mayor in the 1920s, including the parks manager who oversaw the municipal golf courses. By the end of that decade, the Klan was all but defunct, but discrimination remained.<\/p>\n To attract members for the East Denver Golf Club, Flanigan took out an advertisement in The Colorado Statesman in May 1945.\u00a0\u201cThe East Denver Golf Club is going great,\u201d he wrote. \u201cIt is growing larger by the day. I join the East Denver Golf Club in extending their invitation to you. Remember, young or old, rich or poor, you can learn to play this grand sport of golf.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Flanigan recruited men from his neighborhood for the club. They were a collection of railroad porters, dentists, soldiers, firefighters and business owners, men with nicknames like Huck, Coochie and Gip.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThey competed at everything,\u201d says Lawren Cary, the son of an East Denver Golf Club member, who still lives in a house neighboring City Park. \u201cThey had hunting clubs, ski clubs, bowling clubs. I remember them getting home from the course and staying up all night to play cards. When the sun came up, they walked back across the street to the golf course and went at each other there.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n To gain recognition as a bona fide organization, the East Denver Golf Club wrote to the United States Golf Association asking for guidance, drafted bylaws and set a competition schedule. Still, the club had trouble finding local competitions it could enter.\u00a0<\/p>\n Flanigan to Five Points, Biffle from Five Points<\/p>\n James C. Flanigan, the backbone of the East Denver Golf Club, was born in either Fort Smith or Ozark, Arkansas, in 1914 or 1915. He was raised in Kansas by his mother, who instilled in him the importance of education. It was a value she learned from her father, a former slave nicknamed \u201cFess,\u201d short for \u201cprofessor,\u201d because he could read and write.\u00a0<\/p>\n Flanigan attended junior college and supported his family by working behind the fountain at the American Candy Shoppe at 123 West Myrtle Street in Independence, Kansas. When his wife, Luella, developed tuberculosis, Flanigan flipped through an almanac to find a city with a dry climate and a large Black population where he could continue his education. After lingering on Albuquerque, Flanigan scrolled through the B\u2019s and C\u2019s before landing on Denver.\u00a0<\/p>\n Since the late 1800s, Colorado had been a haven for tuberculosis patients, whose lungs responded well to the aridity. While Luella recovered from her illness, Flanigan could continue his education and seek professional opportunities. Denver was a growing city with more than 6,000 Black residents by the late 1930s, most of whom lived in the Five Points neighborhood.\u00a0<\/p>\n To get to Denver, Flanigan said he \u201choboed\u201d on a midnight train from Goodland, Kansas. At least, he hoboed for a while. It was January 1938, and the sleet and snow on the plains proved to be too much. By the time his train got to Limon, a little more than halfway to his destination, he conceded to the weather and purchased a ticket for $1.85 to secure a spot inside a train car for the rest of his journey.\u00a0<\/p>\n Dubbed the \u201cHarlem of the West\u201d by Jack Kerouac, Five Points was a city within a city <\/a>where Black-owned businesses lined the streets. Musical legends, including Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald, performed at the Rossonian nightclub on Welton Street.\u00a0 Heavyweight champions Joe Louis and Sonny Liston held court at Bishops Barbershop.<\/p>\n In Growing Up Black in Denver, Biffle said Five Points was \u201cwhere everybody went, where all the action was and all the socialization; and if anyone bothered you, you\u2019d report to the bartenders at Benny Hooper\u2019s or \u2018Knockout Brown\u2019s,\u2019 and they would take care of the situation.\u201d<\/p>\n Social, political and professional clubs emerged, many with overlapping memberships. The Protective Order of Dining-Car Waiters #465 unionized to fight for better conditions for railroad workers. The Cosmopolitan Club was formed to combat racial and religious tensions. The Owl Club was founded to recognize academic achievement by young Black women. (The group would later honor Denver high school student, future Secretary of State and self-described \u201cmedium handicap golfer\u201d Condoleezza Rice.)<\/p>\n Flanigan arrived at Union Station without knowing a soul in the city and rented a room at the YMCA until Luella could join him in their new hometown. He enrolled at the University of Denver and worked odd jobs as a postal worker and porter on the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad. After graduation, he was chosen for a special school at Lowry Air Force Base, a few miles east of Five Points, and later got a job as an associate economist with the War Labor Board. In 1943, Flanigan accompanied a friend who was applying to Westminster Law School. When the pair walked in the registrar\u2019s office, the clerk persuaded Flanigan to submit an application as well. Although his friend later dropped out of the program, Flanigan was accepted. He had found his purpose.<\/p>\n At around the same time, Biffle was establishing himself as a standout on the East High track team. Biffle was all-city and all-state in four events. He also starred as a halfback on the East High football team, leading the Angels to an undefeated record and state championship in 1945.\u00a0 He was the son of Denver\u2019s first Black fire captain, who worked at station No. 3, the only firehouse in Denver where African-Americans could work, and one of the busiest in the city. As a student-athlete, Biffle faced Jim Crow whenever his team left Denver for meets.<\/p>\n \u201cHe would tell us about when his teams traveled to tournaments,\u201d says Ed Mate, whom Biffle later coached on the East High golf team, \u201cand when the hotels would see Jerome Biffle, they would say, \u2018You can\u2019t stay here,\u2019 and the rest of the team would say, \u2018Well, if he can\u2019t stay here, we\u2019re not staying here.\u2019\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n At the University of Denver, Biffle was called a \u201cone-man track team\u201d because he competed in the 100-meter, 220-meter, long jump, high jump and relay team. In 1950, he was named the top college track athlete in the nation after winning the broad jump in Kansas, Modesto and Fresno track meets.\u00a0<\/p>\n After graduation, Biffle enlisted in the Army and prepared for possible deployment in the Korean War. \u201cI laid off track altogether after going into the Army,\u201d Biffle told a reporter in 1951. \u201cThen this spring I thought I\u2019d like to have a go at the Olympics. So I started working out in April, and the first time I jumped I pulled a muscle.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Despite the rust, Biffle managed to finish second in the long jump at the 1952 Olympic qualifier, which was good enough to earn a spot on the U.S. roster.<\/p>\n On a rainy day at the Helsinki Olympic Stadium, wearing a white USA track uniform and bib #1020, Biffle found himself in second place after his first two attempts, trailing fellow American Meredith \u201cFlash\u201d Gourdine. On his third attempt of the day, Biffle leaped 24 feet, 10.3 inches \u2014 below his personal best, but nearly two inches ahead of Flash. It was enough to win the gold medal.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIt was one of the grandest feelings possible,\u201d Biffle wrote in a letter to his mother, \u201cto stand on the winner\u2019s platform and accept my gold medal beneath the Star-Spangled Banner.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Returning to Colorado, Biffle was greeted with a hero\u2019s welcome at the airport and awarded the Denver Dollar, an old Mile High iteration of a key to the city.<\/p>\n Later that year, Biffle received the Robert B. Russell Award as the Rocky Mountain Region\u2019s outstanding athlete and was selected to stand alongside his idol and mentor Jesse Owens in the Drake Relays Hall of Fame. Governor Dan Thornton called Biffle \u201ca great sportsman and a true American.\u201d<\/p>\n Growing the East Denver Golf Club<\/p>\n However accomplished Flanigan and Biffle were in their respective fields (and tracks), they were not insulated from the omnipresent racism of their hometown.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWhen we moved to Denver from Midland [Texas], I remember being excited about leaving a city in the South that was so segregated. My parents were domestic workers. All the Black folks literally lived on one side of the railroad tracks,\u201d recalls Tom Woodard, a local golfing talent who caddied for Flanigan and Biffle at City Park. \u201cWhen I got to Denver, though, it was more of the same. There were more professional opportunities, but it was still a segregated city.\u201d<\/p>\n When Flanigan inquired about membership in the CGA for the East Denver Golf Club in the 1940s, his application was rebuffed by CGA executive N.C. \u201cTub\u201d Morris, a history teacher at West High School. Without legal recourse to challenge the private organization\u2019s membership standards, the East Denver Golf Club set up matches with other minority groups also ostracized by the CGA, such as the local Japanese club, and joined the Central States Golf Association (CSGA), a collection of Black clubs from around the Midwest.<\/p>\n The CSGA was one of a handful of golf associations, such as the Western States Golf Association and United Golfers Association, that offered Black golfers a chance to compete against other Black golfers. When the CSGA was founded in 1931, municipal golf in America was segregated, and accessibility for Black golfers was subject to the politics of their city or state. There were 700 municipal golf courses in America, but fewer than twenty were open to Blacks.\u00a0<\/p>\n In 1947, the East Denver Golf Club was picked to host the CSGA Championship, an annual gathering of clubs from Des Moines, Kansas City, Omaha and other Midwest cities. The club worked with Mayor Quigg Newton, who\u2019d succeeded Stapleton, to secure Wellshire Golf Course for the event. Newton was more amenable to working with the East Denver Golf Club than the previous administration, and Wellshire was the most prestigious municipal course in Denver, one of the few Donald Ross course designs west of the Mississippi River. The CSGA tournament would serve as a trial run for the PGA Tour\u2019s Denver Open, which was won by Ben Hogan at Wellshire the following year.\u00a0<\/p>\n With Flanigan serving as secretary of the club, the East Denver Golf Club established committees to divide and conquer the responsibilities of running such a big event. A Housing Committee was established to secure safe housing for their guests. The Entertainment Committee, with help from member Leroy Smith, a record store owner, secured Ernie Fields and his Orchestra to play a private show for their guests at the Rainbow Ballroom. A handful of club members\u2019 wives comprised the Scoring Committee. Benny Collier, a law clerk who was part of Flanigan\u2019s regular Sunday foursome, was the eventual winner of the tournament, establishing the East Denver Golf Club as a perennial force among CSGA clubs.<\/p>\n Hosting the tournament turned out to be a pivotal moment for the East Denver Golf Club. The joy and camaraderie members found in the regional gathering launched the club into growth mode. Shortly after the tournament, and perhaps influenced by other CSGA organizations, the East Denver Golf Club inquired with the USGA about proper procedure for establishing a women\u2019s division, and created a free junior program to ensure that future generations would be exposed to golf at no cost to their parents.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen we moved to Denver, we moved literally two blocks from City Park. Seven kids in my family\u2026you ain\u2019t getting no allowance with seven kids. So, I went down to the golf course to caddy and shag balls,\u201d recalls Woodard, a member of the East Denver junior club who later spent a few years on the PGA Tour. \u201cThis junior program that got me into golf was run by the East Denver Golf Club and was 100 percent free. You didn\u2019t pay a penny\u2026I spent all my time at the golf course. I ventured down there to make money, but it was all over when I started playing. I was out there golfing my ball.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n When Denver next played host to the CSGA tournament, in 1954, America was in the early stages of a golf boom. President Dwight Eisenhower was perhaps the most famous golfer in the world, and attracted national attention to golf in Denver. Along with Augusta National, where he played frequently during his presidency, Eisenhower\u2019s other home course away from home was Cherry Hills, about ten miles south of Mamie Eisenhower\u2019s parents\u2019 home.<\/p>\n Ike was at Cherry Hills the weeks before and after receiving the Republican nomination in 1952. He vacationed in Denver his first three years in office, when a typical day started with the president handling official duties out of Lowry Air Force Base in the morning before playing Cherry Hills in the afternoon, with matches arranged by club pro Rip Arnold. In 1953 alone, Eisenhower played sixteen rounds of golf in Denver. During another trip, Ike suffered a heart attack the morning after playing 27 holes at Cherry Hills.<\/p>\n While golf was growing in popularity, Black golfers were fighting for equal playing opportunities. In the wake of the Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education, which established that segregated facilities were unconstitutional, Alfred and Dr. Hamilton Holmes, a father and son, demanded that Atlanta integrate its golf courses. After an initial ruling in their favor that set aside certain days of the week when Blacks could play, the Holmes family questioned whether they should accept limited access at the expense of full integration, and there was dissent among their supporters as to how far the Holmeses should push the case.\u00a0<\/p>\n Future Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, serving as the director of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund at the time, was skeptical of devoting resources to a case about golf. Like others at the organization, he believed the case would benefit a privileged few and would take the NAACP away from its core mission.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cAs the suit headed to the Supreme Court, it became clear that Marshall was wrong: vigorous reaction from both whites and blacks made Holmes v. Atlanta far more than just a case about \u2018a few doctors,\u2019\u201d wrote Lane Demas in Game of Privilege. \u201cInstead, it was one of the first instances in which all Atlanta citizens confronted segregation in post-Brown America.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Finding a Solution<\/p>\n After Biffle was turned away from Park Hill, his foursome filed a complaint with the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Commission alleging Park Hill practiced a policy of discrimination \u201cbased on race and ancestry.\u201d Shearer, who operated the course, was named as a defendant along with the Clayton Trust, which still owned the land. Because the mayor was a trustee for the estate, Biffle\u2019s attorneys argued that the land was subject to the city\u2019s anti-discrimination laws, which prohibited public facilities from refusing service to Blacks.<\/p>\n The Colorado Committee to Oppose Discrimination implored the mayor to act. \u201cIt is true that access to golf facilities may not be as serious as in the other areas but, because athletics and sports have generally been first to open doors to persons of all races and creeds\u2026we were deeply shocked and troubled by the recent incidents in which some of our citizens were denied equal golf opportunities,\u201d the group wrote.<\/p>\n The committee\u2019s\u00a0acknowledgement that golf was not as \u201cserious\u201d as other areas was reminiscent of Thurgood Marshall\u2019s position, yet the CCOD worried that reports of discrimination at the height of tourist season would give visitors the wrong impression of Colorado.<\/p>\n Mayor Richard Batterton instructed City Attorney Robert Wham to investigate; he wanted to understand his liability as mayor and did not want to be an accessory to discrimination at Park Hill. In addition to Biffle\u2019s case, the mayor was aware of Judge Flanigan\u2019s rejection by the CGA and was sympathetic to his cause, although he did not have jurisdiction over the private organization. Batterton had a professional relationship with the judge and was set to reappoint him to the bench the following month, and the swearing-in ceremony might be uncomfortable if the situation was not resolved.\u00a0<\/p>\n Ed Mate, Biffle\u2019s former student, is now the head of the CGA. He says the organization missed a warning that would have helped it avoid the controversy that erupted after Flanigan was turned away. During one of his many roles at the organization, Mate interviewed Denver golf historian Dan Hogan about the incident. Hogan, who was White, played most of his golf out of City Park alongside Flanigan, Biffle and other members of the East Denver Golf Club. Before the 1961 tournament, Hogan was invited to address the CGA Board of Governors at Denver Country Club.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cMy purpose was to see if they might consider membership for the East Denver Club in the Colorado Golf Association,\u201d Hogan said. \u201cThey didn\u2019t think it was a good idea. I told them\u2026they might reap a whirlwind about that and it could have been avoided. They were a well-organized club with as much right out there as Wellshire\u2019s men\u2019s club or City Park\u2019s men\u2019s club to be a part of the Colorado Golf Association, but they didn\u2019t feel it was the proper thing to do at this time.\u201d<\/p>\n As Hogan predicted, word of Flanigan\u2019s rejection soon spread around the country.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThis is part of our history,\u201d Mate says. \u201cIt\u2019s not something that we\u2019re proud of, but we need to be honest with ourselves. This is part of who we were. Part of what society was.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Denver Rabbi Robert Hammer dedicated a sermon to Flanigan\u2019s plight. \u201cA Negro cannot play golf on the sacred links of Cherry Hills Country Club?\u201d Hammer said from the bimah. \u201cThere is no reason for this and there is no excuse for this.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n The Denver NAACP mocked the CGA by honoring the eventual champion, Sam Valuck, as the \u201cCaucasian Amateur Golf Champion of Colorado.\u201d Rip Arnold, the Cherry Hills pro who arranged games for Eisenhower, wrote Flanigan a letter of apology.\u00a0<\/p>\n Meanwhile, City Attorney Wham held a series of meetings with a delegation representing the East Denver Golf Club that included former State Representative Ike Moore, Flanigan\u2019s old law partner, and law clerk Benny Collier, Flanigan\u2019s frequent golf partner. The East Denver emissaries made the recommendation that legislators enact a policy barring discrimination on municipal golf courses. Wham secured sponsors on Denver City Council, and in November 1961, Ordinance No. 316 passed unanimously, making it unlawful to knowingly conduct a golf tournament if any participation is known to be denied because of race, creed, color, national origin, ethnic or religious consideration.<\/p>\n Wham suggested to Batterton that the recommendations be followed in conjunction with holding informal talks with the CGA, and not as a substitute. It\u2019s unclear whether such talks materialized, but the CGA Board of Governors dropped its ban on Black clubs the following month and approved the East Denver Golf Club as its newest member. The CGA President said the board \u201cfelt that our responsibilities to all of the citizens of Colorado should be paramount and override any private or selfish considerations.\u201d<\/p>\n Passing the Baton<\/p>\n Woodard, whose first set of golf clubs and shoes were given to him by Flanigan, became the first Black man to make the finals of the CGA Championship. He credits the East Denver Golf Club not only with getting him started in golf, but with supporting him financially for his first few years as a professional golfer.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI said at ten years old, \u2018That\u2019s what I want to do for a living.\u2019\u201d Woodard remembers. \u201c\u2018I want to go to the golf course every day and play golf,\u2019 and I did it.\u201d<\/p>\n After his career as a professional golfer ended, Woodard returned to Denver to work as a golf professional, eventually rising to Director of Golf for the City of Denver. Inspired by the junior program that first exposed him to the game, Woodard established the city\u2019s First Tee program<\/a> that provided instruction to hundreds of local children.\u00a0<\/p>\n Mate, who has known Woodard for years, also dedicated his professional career to expanding golf opportunities for Denver youth. After working his way up from intern to head of the CGA, Mate created the Golf in Schools initiative<\/a>, which works with local schools to provide instruction on-site.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cSchools are desperate for these types of programs,\u201d he says. \u201cWhen we show up with instructors, equipment, thoughtful curriculum that is safe and fun, and you see kids that never even knew what a golf club was hitting that \u2018birdie ball,\u2019 you just see that big smile on their face of that shot euphoria that those of us who fell in love with the game have all experienced.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Like Woodard, Mate caddied at City Park as a kid and earned an Evans Caddie Scholarship at Boulder. His proudest accomplishment as head of the CGA is its Solich Caddie and Leadership program<\/a>, which now has four chapters in Colorado.<\/p>\n The Denver Inquirer\/Denver East Golf Club<\/p>\n \u201cBoulder is not exactly the most diverse city,\u201d Mate says, \u201cBut if you walk in the Evans Scholarship House and look at the composite, you would see women, men, Black, White, tan, because of the Colorado Golf Association. \u2026We have a diverse population. The Ethiopian Community, the Hispanic Community, has just been incredibly connected to this program, and we have now become the primary path to receiving Evans Scholarships in the state of Colorado. As a direct result of that, the Evans House went from 98 percent White men to 50 percent women, and men and women of all colors. If I do nothing else in my tenure at the CGA, I\u2019ll feel pretty darn good about that.\u201d<\/p>\n Even if they had not challenged Denver golf\u2019s racial barriers in 1961, Flanigan and Biffle would have impacted generations of local golfers and put clubs in the hands of an untold number of kids who would not have been exposed to golf without the influence of the East Denver Golf Club.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201c[Biffle] didn\u2019t try to coach us much in golf, but he was certainly a life coach,\u201d Mate says. \u201cAt practice, he would get us started and then drive his Cadillac up to the fourth tee and he would stand on the tee box, and he\u2019d have these Wilson Staff Pro Staffs in sleeves and if we hit the green, he would give us a golf ball. \u2026Sometimes he\u2019d play with us. He\u2019d go out and join us and we played for fictitious money. I once owed him $20 million.\u201d<\/p>\n Although the East Denver Golf Club faded away in the 1980s, its members remained a fixture at City Park. Flanigan and Biffle\u2019s friendship spanned parts of six decades. In 1997, when Tiger Woods won the Masters, Flanigan invited his old golf buddies to celebrate.<\/p>\n \u00a0\u201cI had the fellows over to the house, had them bring some barbecue and catfish,\u201d Flanigan told the Denver Post.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe sat there and were just overwhelmed.\u2019\u201d Biffle added. \u201cI was delighted to see him win that, and do as well as he\u2019s done. It opens a lot of doors for Blacks. I think you\u2019ll find more and more Black kids taking up golf because of him.\u201d<\/p>\n Biffle died of pulmonary fibrosis in 2002, but the former long jumper lived long enough to touch the Olympic torch one last time as it passed through Denver on its way to the Games in Salt Lake City. After his death, members of his blood family and golf family spread his ashes at City Park. Despite multiple bypass operations, Flanigan played regularly at City Park into his eighties. He died in 2008, a few years before the Lindsey-Flanigan Courthouse, named in part after the pioneering judge, opened in Denver.\u00a0<\/p>\n In 2018, Park Hill Golf Course shut down indefinitely. The Clayton Trust sold the land to developers who sought to turn the golf course into a commercial real estate venture, but a conservation easement placed on the property dictated that the land remain green space. Despite ballot proposals and litigation seeking a lifting of the easement, the property remained an empty, dystopian shell of a former golf course for years, with \u201cKeep Out\u201d signs dotting the perimeter. In early 2025, Mayor Mike Johnston announced that the city had agreed to a land swap to acquire the property<\/a> and end the stalemate; last month, the park reopened at least partially as open space. Money from the just-passed Vibrant Denver bond package<\/a> will help complete the former golf course\u2019s transformation.<\/p>\n Around the time the Park Hill Golf Course closed, City Park Golf Course underwent a massive renovation, part of a flood-mitigation plan to make the course more sustainable. As Woodard envisioned, the new layout includes a dedicated four-hole course for juniors. The clubhouse atop the hill provides a view of the city skyline beyond the neighboring Five Points community, with the Front Range and the Rocky Mountains in the background. A display in the lobby includes a brief history of the East Denver Golf Club, with photos of a young Tom Woodard receiving instruction in the junior program.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cTub\u201d Morris, the former CGA executive who told Flanigan the CGA would not accept Black clubs, was inducted into the Colorado Golf Hall of Fame in 1974. Bob Shearer, the owner of the Park Hill Club, was inducted in 1996. Woodard was formally inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2012, but notes that neither Flanigan nor Biffle is a member.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s something I think must be addressed,\u201d Woodard says. \u201cThose two men did as much for golf in this state as anyone else.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Judge Flanigan\u2019s courtroom was out of session on Monday, August 7, 1961. His honor had a 10:12 tee…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":289776,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[71],"tags":[427,152140,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-289775","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-golf","8":"tag-golf","9":"tag-history-nostalgia","10":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289775","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=289775"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289775\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/289776"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=289775"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=289775"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=289775"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"election](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/judge-james-flanigan-election-westword-1-e1762972990709.jpg\")
An election campaign card for Judge James Flanigan.<\/p>\n![\"U.S.](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/jerome-biffle-archive-photo-1-e1762972935519.jpg\")
Jerome Biffle (far right) was an Olympic track star and amateur golfer from Denver.<\/p>\n![\"Denver](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/denver-east-golf-club-central-state-program-willis-case.jpg\")
An official program for the 1954 Central States Golf Tournament held in 1954 at Willis Case Golf Course in Denver.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Denver-inquirer-east-golf-club-article.jpg\")
An article in the now-defunct Denver Inquirer about the Central States tournament held at Willis Case. Flanigan is sitting in the bottom left.<\/p>\n