Celebrating a century as a community gathering place
The Longview Golf & Country Club was originally organized in October 1923, the same year the City of Longview was founded. After a couple of relocations, and a name change to Longview Country Club, the first nine holes opened for play on April 30, 1927, with the back nine opening in 1958. The club is honoring the original 1923 date and will be celebrating its centennial along with the City of Longview in 2023.
“We are a small town club tucked away in the countryside of southwest Washington,” said Ellie Lathrop, a longtime member of the club. “We love this place and want to keep it alive. The best thing about our club are the members, many of whom become best friends.”
The club, which now has nearly 300 members, has always focused on being a family-friendly place. With the central core of the club’s main building nearing 100 years, it serves for many of its members as their second living and dining room. It’s their place to hang out, play cards, bring guests, enjoy lunch, and make new friends. Many members actively volunteer their time to help maintain the club through gardening, pressure-washing, and painting, among other maintenance activities. Golf is the club’s principal business, with an active men’s, women’s, and junior groups. It is a small private member-owned club that is open year-around, with many members playing all year. The course changes character during the different seasons of the year, from damp fairways and very receptive greens in the winter, to dry conditions in the summer providing lots of roll. But the club has a lot of activities other than just golf. They conduct a monthly family bingo night, a weekly Queen of Hearts competition as a fundraiser, plus a 50-50 raffle. There is also a weekly Texas Hold ‘Em game. These funds are used for improvements around the clubhouse.
The club conducts eight “Ladies Night Out” events each year. During the summer they hold Jack and Jill scrambles, and in the winter they have a club-wide turkey scramble before Thanksgiving and ham scramble in December. During the respective holiday seasons, there are Easter egg hunts, Santa makes an appearance at Christmas, along with decorated golf cart parades. The club hosts a lot of events such as weddings, Christmas parties, reunions, wedding and baby showers, and lots of various reunions. The Rotary meets in the clubhouse for lunch weekly, as does the Women’s Junior League, United Way and Chamber of Commerce.
The swimming pool is open on warm days in the summer and gets a lot of use. There is occasional live music, dancing, and karaoke, and the club’s restaurant is open mostly for lunch and a few nights for dinner. And of course lots of golf tournaments, both in-house and outside for companies, schools, and various fundraisers. Longview CC’s women’s club are members of the Washington State Women’s Golf Association, and so have hosted both of its championships, most recently holding the senior championship in 2018.
In the past, the club has hosted the prestigious Washington Men’s Amateur and Washington Women’s Amateur championships, and this year they hosted the Washington Parent-Child Chapman.
Most play some kind of competition, but all play for fun, as it is a game for a lifetime at the Longview Country Club. Golf is a wonderful physical activity that gets us in the outdoors in a beautiful setting for a few hours at a time.
The club also has highly competitive events every year, such as our club championship, the men’s member-guest, as well as the women’s invitational, called the Ladies Lower Columbia.
Memorable and historic, Longview Country Club has woven itself into the lives of those who live in southwest Washington.