Course Description
In the early part of the 1900s Mr. Sipple, a farmer, gave approximately 300 acres of land to his grandson, August C. Sipple. The stone wall, still standing on Laurel Avenue, marked the western border of the property. In 1913, August Sipple built 13 golf holes on the property and called it Crestmont.
In 1918, Emma C. Sipple, widow of August, sold the property to Andrew and Agnes Force. The Forces kept the property until May 1922, then sold the club with all buildings, farm and golf machinery to the Newark Athletic Club of Newark, N.J. (N.A.C.)
In 1923, N.A.C. hired Donald Ross to design an 18-hole course. Ross, acknowledged as one of the premier golf course architects of all time, designed and built an 18-hole golf course leaving little of the holes put in place by Sipple. The work required felling hundreds of trees and excavating tons of rock. It is believed that the fairway mounds on the fifth hole were created to bury some of the rock.
Ancillary to the golf course, an athletic field and grandstand, plus a polo field circumscribed by a cinder track were built in a quadrant formed by the right angle meeting of the fifth and sixth holes, currently our lower reservoir. This installation was the venue for the International Track and Field Championship in 1924 and two years later the Olympic Trials, which were noteworthy for the fact that Jesse Owens was one of the qualifiers. The concrete piers and metal stanchions for the grandstand are still in place just south of the reservoir.
N.A.C. ran Crestmont Golf Club as a privately owned public country club. It was advertised in the newspapers at the time, that Crestmont could be reached by auto or bus from Newark. Players were charged $2.00 on weekdays and $3.00 on weekends.
In 1932 N.A.C. went bankrupt. As a result the property was taken over by Fireman’s Insurance Company of Newark.
Firemen’s ran the club until November 19, 1945 and then sold it to Richard H. Frost. Mr. Frost ran the property as a private club and named it Crestmont Country Club with officers and committees made up of members. He sold the club to Redmond Associates Inc. in December of 1953.
Redmond had 64 members who were also members of Crestmont Country Club. Redmond leased the property to Crestmont Country Club for 5 years on a net basis. The arrangement lasted for 1½ years until Redmond sold the complete existing facility to 248 members of Crestmont Country Club, our current organization.