The talk of the badlands

Bully Pulpit Golf Course was built with a small budget in unusual circumstances, yet has exceeded expectations

What’s the Theodore Roosevelt Medora Foundation?

It was created in 1986 when Harold Schafer sold his company, the Gold Seal Company, which made products such as Mr. Bubble, Snowy Bleach and Glass Wax. The Bismark, N.D.-based company had a division called Medora, which is the gateway community to the Theodore Roosevelt National Park. When Harold sold it, it was clear the company that purchased it didn’t have any interest in Medora. So Harold ended up creating a non-profit foundation and gifted all the assets that were the holdings in this little town. It’s patterned much like Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia – there’s no ownership. Since then, we’ve been adopted by the people of North Dakota and are supported generously by the folks around the state as we continue to add attractions and offerings for visitors.

Explain your background. How did you get to Medora?

I’m a certified public accountant, and I’ve been in Medora almost 18 years. I was hired as the controller.

There was a survey done about three or four years ago by our state’s magazine, Horizons. Readers were asked who were the most influential people in the history of the state. Readers named four: Wild Bill Langer, who was a maverick politician; Lawrence Welk, most people recognize that name, and the other two were Harold Schafer and Theodore Roosevelt. Both of them called Medora, which doesn’t have 100 people, home.

Harold Schafer was the person with resources. Another man named Rod Tjaden, who was my boss for nine years before he passed away from cancer, hired me, and I basically came out to be the controller. I ended up doing that and then became the operations manager and took care of personnel. And when Rod passed away eight years ago, the board asked me to take over the president’s role of the foundation.

Explain the background and timing of the golf course.

For as long as I can remember being here, someone, including Rod, thought it would be great if there was a golf course in Medora. I read through hand written notes of Harold Schafer’s about things needed for Medora, and a golf course was one of them. But we were never able to move on it because there were always issues about water and adequate land space. A few years ago, a ranch adjacent to property we already owned was for sale, and we started to look. Bill Clairmont, a board member who doesn’t golf, became the driving force for the project. He helped people see how good the project could be for North Dakota. We had a great project manager, Jack Marquart, who hiked the property – 50 hours I’m sure – and he took me out there for quite a bit of that time and said here’s where this hole could be and that hole could be. I thought he was nuts, but he knew because he had been involved with golf course projects before. The course was developed quickly. Sometime in 2000, we serious said we could build a golf course. We built it in 2002, we grew it in in 2003, and we played in 2004.

How were the water concerns abated?

First, Bill Clairmont recognized the water quality was poor and we needed to store water. So he suggested we build reservoirs. Then we hired a guy to do all the feasibility work – could the land become a golf course, could we solve the water issue – all that before we even owned the land. Jack Marquart came up with a wonderful solution for the water problem. There isn’t quality water if you were to dig a well out here, so he went back and got the water flow records from the state, and in 49 years, there wasn’t a single year where there wouldn’t have been adequate spring runoff to fill holding ponds. So we have about 320 acre feet of stored water from the spring runoff. Those reservoirs were constructed, and that gives us almost a two-year water supply if we needed it. That’s how we solved it.

So, for the foreseeable future, there’s no water problem?

No. We’re always going to have to take water during the spring. If it happens that there isn’t any spring runoff, which has never happened before, we could put in a well in an emergency, but we’re pretty confident and comfortable with the water. The quality is still one of the challenges. But Dave Solga, our director of golf, applied gypsum and ran the water through a sulfur burner and recirculated it back into the ponds. He’s been able to get the water to almost neutral.

What was the cost to build the course?

$5.4 million, and that’s everything including a clubhouse, parking lot, maintenance shop, turf equipment and golf carts. The construction of the course was right at about $3.8 million, and that included almost three-quarters of million dollars building the irrigation ponds.

How was the course built at that cost?

The most important thing we did was hire Jack Marquart. He became our project manager. We probably went a little over. We didn’t have a big budget, but we stayed pretty darn close. Jack collected the bids for thproject. He was on the job site every single day and never left. He worked extremely well with contractors and with the architect, Mike Hurdzan, who also understood we didn’t have a lot of money. But Mike came out here and saw that this is a world-class site. Between Mike and Jack, there was a philosophy of a minimalist kind of approach to designing the golf course. Some courses that we have in this state are fantastic and are as good as any place in the country, and builders moved 1.1 million cubic yards of dirt. We moved 75,000.

When we went about selecting the architect, Jack got 11 names on paper, and we narrowed it down to four. Then we interviewed four architects who are all good. Any one of them could have done the job for us, but Hurdzan was so impressive. He made two trips on his own. He had never heard of the place, but he loved the land so much. He was clearly the person we wanted to do the job. He was selected because he understood we are nonprofit and don’t have any money. But he wanted to do the job. People all along the way said they wanted to be part of this because it looked like it was going to be something extra special.

We are within a few miles of a national park, and we were concerned about how the course was going to affect the area. At the time we were interviewing, we learned Hurdzan won the most environmentally sensitive design two years in a row. That was important to us because it fit with our philosophy. We’re in a pretty unique area, and it could be a potentially fragile area. He did a good job of helping us understand how the golf course could actually enhance everything that’s there and even make for a stronger environment.

How was the course financed?

We went about seeking help, because as a nonprofit organization, most of the things we have done are through gifts. The first major thing that happened was the community passed a special tax to support construction – a half percent tax that’s dedicated throughout a period of about six or seven years. About a half a million dollars will help pay for this golf course through that tax. The second thing was the county was very supportive. That doesn’t affect the construction cost, but the county paved a road to make it an accessible place. And then primarily the lead contribution was from the Medora Foundation. We committed to taking on debt to build it.

There also are individual and corporate sponsors from around the state. There are 13 holes that were named with a donation of $100,000, and the donation brings with it zero benefit. One hole was sponsored at a $125,000, and three holes were sponsored with gifts of a quarter million dollars each. There are no memberships at the course, and anybody who contributed pays the full green fee. They did it because they saw it as an economic development vehicle for southwest North Dakota.

And then the deck at the clubhouse was $250,000. There was a transportation grant for $350,000 because there’s a museum in the clubhouse.

Were there any other difficulties building the course?

Jack Marquart was to impress on the contractors that we wanted to disturb very little, so he went about creating the travel routes so the native areas weren’t touched. This made for a much more careful requirement from the contractors. I suspect a lot of golf courses try to do that, and many are successful. People say they can’t believe it’s a second year course. Well, it was a challenge to make it that way. I can remember while we were in the construction phase, Mike Hurdzan said one of the goals of this project would be that within a year or two, people think this course was here for 25 years. It was unbelievable – that was almost the exact response people would say coming off the golf course. That was a challenge that was met.

Another challenge was working with the soil. We didn’t use USGA greens mix. We used the native ground and made our greens out of that. Dave Solga worked hard to make sure we could have greens that are going to be enjoyable because the native mix isn’t perfect. He screened that stuff by hand many times. Just about the time we were to seed the green, Solga brought out a machine called a Nolte because he was concerned the soil wasn’t a clean enough mix. So he literally hand screened the soil on the greens before we seeded them. The environment can be harsh out here. It’s badlands. We had many hot days. Hole No. 15 was reseeded five times because of the heat, wind and occasional downpour. So the elements were the other big challenge.

What type of grass was used?

Fescue with native grasses in the fairways. The greens were Seaside II, a more salt-tolerant grass.

What market research was conducted before the course was built?

When we first looked at it, I did my own pro forma and estimates, and our board wisely said that’s all well and good, but we need to have an independent study done before we would decide to acquire the land for sure and proceed.A firm call THK & Associates out of Colorado looked over the site. It had all the demographic information and county and state population data. The thing that was really telling in its report is that it had done more than 2,000 feasibility studies, and about 400 of its studies lead to the construction of golf courses. So that told us the firm wasn’t just saying build a golf course. The firm said it would rate this site in the top 5 percent or 10 percent of all the sites they had ever been asked to provide services for. But it concluded there is limited opportunity to have local play support a golf course, and it’s going to have to be the traveling public that supports it. The firm drew our market area as 30 miles around. Well, when you do that, there are probably not 2,500 people who live in that area. When you’re 35 miles away, there’s a community of about 18,000 people. So it almost all has to come from the traveling public.
The firm projected we would have 9,700 rounds of golf in our first year of operation and during an eight year period, we could have the potential to grow to about 18,800 rounds. But during out first year, we had 13,800 rounds, and I’m hopeful that we will be around 15,000, maybe even 16,000, which would have been our year four or five projection. It’s stronger than we anticipated.

Have you done any marketing of the course after it was built?

We’ve tried to, at least locally. In our regular marketing campaign, Bully Pulpit has been front and center. We’ve tried to have some media events. We’ve invited golf writers this spring. Word of mouth and articles like this one are probably generating the most awareness. Around here, we think about Bully Pulpit every day, but we know hardly anybody knows about us. We don’t have the money to market in a broad way. We’re going to have to rely on people hearing about us.

Are you getting tourist as well as people driving there specifically to play golf?

We’re getting both. Medora is the state’s No. 1 destination. The national park is a few miles away. Our most important asset and attraction is the outdoor Burning Hills Amphitheatre that is home to the “Medora Musical.” 110,000 people come to see that show a year. Many of them come every year from the upper Midwest. What we’re finding is two things: First, those people who regularly come to Medora are happy to put their golf clubs in their vehicle because they have a place to play golf when they come here. Second, the golf course has created enough buzz that people who wouldn’t be coming to Medora are coming specifically because they want to play Bully Pulpit. That’s the only reason I can see that we’ve started so much stronger than we’ve anticipated.

Are there any other golf courses nearby?

There are good golf courses in North Dakota. The closest is a little 18-hole community golf course called Pheasant Run in Southheart. That’s about 27 miles away. Dickinson, our regional city, has a beautiful 18-hole municipal course called Heart River. There are three courses, called the triple challenge: Bully Pulpit, Hawk Tree in Bismark and The Links of North Dakota, also known as Red Mike. They’re known nationally, and are all within about two hours of each other.

Have there been any studies showing the affects of the course on the national park?

The national park monitors things regularly. It’s been three or four summers now, and we’ve never gotten any indication of concerns of any sort. We work pretty closely with the national park.

What are the rates?

The green fee is $49. On Monday and Tuesday, we have a $39 green fee. A cart is $15 if you take one.

Who hired Dave Solga?

I hired Dave, but he kind of selected himself because we didn’t advertise. I had about five superintendents call me because they read a news brief about Mike Hurdzan building a course in the badlands. Dave had been the superintendent at Quarry at Giants Ridge Golf Course in Biwabik, Minn. He’s originally from North Dakota. He drove nine hours to come see this project. He said he wanted to be back in North Dakota but was used to working at nice courses, however, when he saw Mike Hurdzan was building this he became curious. He ended up driving twice in about a 10-day period.

Being a superintendent, Dave said he’d like to expand his career because he thought he could run an entire golf course, both the clubhouse and the course itself. He wanted the opportunity to do that and thought this looked like a great place. He sold me on the idea. He’s done a great job for us. He also won the environmental management award from the Golf Course Superintendents Association of America the year before he came here. We always said we need people who appreciate the landscape and want to keep it nice.

Anything else?

One of the attractions of the site is its history. Every hole is interesting because it has a story, some of which are history related. General George Custer camped within a quarter mile of the golf course. General George Crook and General Alfred Sully were all down there. Hole No. 4 is called Custer’s Wash because when you stand on the tee box, the point where he crossed the Little Missouri River on the way to the Battle of Little Big Horn is about 150 yards away. It’s a subtle thing, but it adds to the players’ enjoyment. Eventually, we will have a souvenir yardage booklet that tells those stories.

The last thing Hurdzan described before we built the course is why he thought the golf course would be enjoyed by people. It’s always fascinating when something comes out the way someone predicts, then you have even more respect for him. Hurdzan says golfers will leave a golf course and have a certain reaction, but sometimes they won’t be able to understand or even describe why they liked it as much as they did. He said if you can take golfers through two environments, that’s nice. If you can take them through three, it’s rare. Golfers won’t be able to tell you why, but that’s why they really enjoyed it. At Bully Pulpit, a third of the holes are like traditional American golf courses where you go through some trees and the holes are generously wide. About a third of the holes are close to the Little Missouri River and quite open, almost links style. And a third of the holes aren’t like many places you can go, such as right in the heart of the badlands, literally hitting from butte to butte or in a valley between some dramatic badlands. Hurdzan said that’s what will stick out. People will talk about the badlands holes because the course builds up to that. It was interesting that he saw that before the course was built. And he was right because people talk about it when they come off the golf course. GCN

For more information, visit www.medora.com.