Number 9
Tramping Feet

It is a morning in early January (1934) snow covers the ground, sparsely over the open reaches, but deeper in the gullies and swales of the woodlands of thirteen hundred Long Island acres. Six hundred men start work this wintry morning, men who have needed occupation. Now they are stepping into the program of the Long Island State Park Commission, which is to provide employment for men and at the same time mark the establishment and speed the building of 72 holes of golf for the use of New York’s golfers who frequent semi-public courses.

The old Lenox Hills course at Bethpage forms the nucleus of this new plan, which provides for the construction of three entirely new courses with some additions and eventual improvements to the existing one. If a greater number of holes ever have been conceived and constructed at one time, anywhere, we have no knowledge of them.

The tract of land is particularly attractive and undoubtedly a golf centre of rare distinction will develop with unprecedented rapidity. However enthralling the vision of this completed work may be, it is the reality of the tramping of twelve hundred feet, -- six hundred men starting that work which is so tremendously impressive at the moment.

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