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About
A hundred-plus years of Kootenay golf. We've played in two different valleys, leased land from Cominco twice, and bought the Birchbank property outright in 2004. Today we're member-owned, public-access, and unhurried.
The club was organized on April 22, 1922, with 81 shareholders and a first course on Floyd Ranch above Warfield. By 1926 we'd moved to Cominco-leased land and built nine holes in Rossland, the course that would run for eighty years.
In 1962, Cominco leased a second stretch of land between Trail and Castlegar and a local pro named Roy Stone routed nine holes along the west bank of the Columbia. The first nine opened in 1964. Then Stone routed nine more; the back nine and clubhouse opened in 1969. Birchbank became Rossland Trail's 18-hole home.
The club bought the Birchbank property from Cominco in 2004. The Rossland course closed in 2006 after Cominco sold that land, but Birchbank, by then ours outright, kept playing. In 2018, new irrigation, restored greens, and ponds on holes 12 and 15 reconfigured the layout back to Stone's original 1969 routing.
That's the course you walk today: a hundred years of Kootenay golf, played on the land Stone routed sixty-plus years ago, by a club still member-owned.
Milestones