Widow's Walk Golf Course

Origins

Long before it was a golf course, the ridge along Scituate's Driftway was known as Colman's Hill, a rise offering broad views over the North River estuary. Starting in 1914, the Boston Sand and Gravel Company began carting the hill away — first by steam-driven barge, later by truck and rail — supplying sand and gravel for projects including Boston's Southeast Expressway and the runway expansion at Logan Airport. By 1963, more than 14 million tons of material had been removed and the hill was gone; that same year, a fire destroyed the sand and gravel company's operation.

The abandoned quarry sat idle through the 1970s and 80s. The Town of Scituate eventually acquired the roughly 100-acre site, but with no fencing or active use, it became an informal dump and a haven for dirt bikers, left littered with old tires and discarded appliances and largely devoid of wildlife. With no public golf course of its own, the town saw an opportunity to convert the derelict quarry into a daily-fee course, and hired Ohio-based architect Michael Hurdzan, working with his then-partner Dana Fry, to design it.

Design Philosophy

Hurdzan and Fry treated the wrecked landscape as an asset rather than a problem. Rather than grading the quarry's leftover mounds flat, Hurdzan built the routing around them, using the irregular high ground for elevated tees — including the tee that gave the course its name, perched high enough for a water view reminiscent of the rooftop lookouts, or "widow's walks," built onto old New England sea captains' houses so families could watch for returning ships.

The design became a genuine research project as much as a golf course. Twelve of the eighteen greens were split evenly between pure-sand and USGA-spec construction, and the remaining six were built using native soil in an older "push-up" style, so superintendents could compare water, fertilizer, and pesticide needs across all three methods under identical conditions. Drought-tolerant, disease-resistant fescue grasses were planted in the rough, and irrigation was limited to roughly 30 of the property's acres — well below what a typical 18-hole course would use. The project's backers, including the USGA and the Audubon Society of New York State, wanted to know whether the same approach could be applied more broadly to reduce golf's environmental footprint.

Development

Widow's Walk opened in 1997 to national press attention, including coverage in the Christian Science Monitor, as an example of golf course construction rethought from the ground up — down to a parking lot paved with recycled asphalt. Golf Digest named it among the "Best New Courses in America" the following year.

The course played firm and demanding when it opened, and after feedback from golfers about its difficulty, the town widened several fairways and added rough in the years that followed to slow balls from rolling into the surrounding scrub. In 2002, Widow's Walk was designated a Certified Audubon Cooperative Sanctuary, recognizing its ongoing habitat and water-quality programs. The clubhouse underwent a full interior renovation in 2022, expanding the kitchen to professional grade and increasing seating capacity for the restaurant, along with a repaved parking lot and new landscaping.

Recognition

Widow's Walk's environmental approach drew attention well beyond Scituate, discussed as an early test case for whether reclaimed industrial land — rather than farmland, forest, or wetland — could be a viable, and preferable, site for new golf course construction. Golf Digest recognized it twice, first on its "Best New Courses in America" list and later on its "Four Stars" Courses to Play ranking in 2004, while regional readers' polls from the South Shore's local papers and South Shore Living magazine have repeatedly named it a top public course in the area.

Today

Widow's Walk remains municipally owned and operated by the Town of Scituate as a daily-fee public course, with Ian Kelley serving as PGA Director of Golf. Alongside walk-up and online tee times, it offers seasonal memberships, adult and junior instruction, and a roster of public golf leagues. In winter, the town opens the course's cart paths to walkers, snowshoers, and cross-country skiers.

Three decades after opening, the fescue rough and plantings have matured into the "old course feel" golfers now associate with the site, even as its origin as a sand-and-gravel quarry remains visible in its compact, undulating routing.