Bandon Dunes

In 1999, a national golf magazine sent me on a road trip four and a half hours from my home in Portland to review a new resort on the Oregon coast that seemed particularly destined for obscurity.

- Jeff Wallach

I rolled my eyes at the press release describing the property and booked a cheap motel, which was the only place to stay in Bandon at the time.

The backstory is of interest: Recycled-greeting-card visionary Mike Keiser invested several million dollars of his own money to buy a gorse-covered sand hill located far enough from any population center to discourage travel to it. He constructed a traditional links layout with minimal lodging, limited food and beverage options and few amenities. Keiser deemed the course walking-only—a virtually unheard-of form of financial suicide at the time. Upon completion, Bandon hoped to someday put out a modest 10,000 rounds of golf annually (they hit 25,000 in the first year). The optimistic far-future build-out called for room for 121 guests.

Today I think about my first Bandon visit in terms of what the music critic Jon Landau said when he encountered a certain band in 1974: “I saw rock-and-roll future…and its name is Bruce Springsteen.” Not overly given to superlatives, I wrote in my original story: