Nibley Park is turning 100. This is how an amusement park became a Salt Lake City golf staple

So many golfers tell Andrew Mecham how Nibley Park is the first course they ever played that he almost laughs when he hears another origin story. After a year as the head professional, Mecham has come to appreciate Nibley’s niche: “It’s kind of neat to see where it all starts.”

That’s true statewide. Nibley Park is celebrating a 100th anniversary as Utah’s first public course, with the asterisk that while nearby Forest Dale GC is older, that venue originally was The Country Club’s site.

The Salt Lake City course’s dedication on May 20, 1922, on the site of a former amusement park was a major production. The event featured an exhibition round by future Utah Golf Hall of Fame inductees Florence Halloran and George Von Elm and ceremonial drives by course benefactor Charles W. Nibley and Heber J. Grant, president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

M.R. Stewart, the city parks commissioner, “promised that if the people would just be patient, money would be forthcoming” to improve the course’s condition, The Salt Lake Tribune reported.

That’s an ongoing process, a century later. With its antiquated irrigation system, Salt Lake City Golf director Matt Kammeyer acknowledged, “That course needs a lot of love.” He’s hoping to fund major upgrades, via a $2 improvement fee attached to each nine-hole round at city courses.

Yet even as a modest, nine-hole facility, Nibley has made an oversized contribution to Utah golf history.

The original design for Nibley Park was a par-33, 2,781-yard nine. When a new clubhouse was built in 1982, the routing changed as No. 1 became No. 6. With space created in the northeast corner of the property along 2700 South, the new No. 5 (formerly No. 9) was expanded to a par-5.

From the back tees, the three par-3s are major tests, with Nos. 3 and 8 stretching more than 200 yards and No. 9 requiring a 165-yard shot over the lake that once was an attraction, not a hazard.

So how did Nibley Park become a golf course? A monument, installed by the Daughters of Utah Pioneers near the parking lot just west of 700 East, is a good starting point:

“In the early 1860s George and Mary B. Calder built one of the first amusement parks on this spot. They cleared the land with oxen, planted grass and trees and converted a natural spring of water into a lake for boating. It was spanned by a picturesque bridge. A dance pavilion, racetrack, ball park, merry go round and other attractions were built. In the year 1909 it was improved and the name changed to Wandamere. After changing hands several times, Charles W. Nibley purchased the resort and presented it to Salt Lake City for recreational purposes.”

Nibley was a native of Scotland who didn’t take up golf until age 66 (he died in 1931 at 82). Described as a “railroad-sugar-lumber magnate” in a 1982 Deseret News story, Nibley bought Wandamere Park from the LDS Granite Stake for $100,000 in 1921, according to a Utah Historical Society document. Nibley deeded the property to Salt Lake City, with the provision that the city “use it as a golf course or return it to the Nibley family,” The Tribune wrote in 2015, when the potential closure of city courses was being discussed.

During the ceremony in 1922, Salt Lake City Mayor Charles Neslen said Nibley’s gift of the property “is better, perhaps, than the endowment of a university, for it will serve to keep our people and especially the boys and girls in the great outdoors, and will be a means of building a finer citizenship.”

The stories of Utah Golf Hall of Fame inductees Arlen Peacock and Mike Malaska suggest that purpose was fulfilled.

Peacock, who beat teenagers Jimmy Blair and Jay Don Blake in the 1970s to win State Amateur titles at ages 39 and 44, grew up in the area between Nibley Park and Forest Dale. “He spent many summer days caddying and shagging balls, through which he found a real love for the game of golf,” his obituary noted in 2020.

Malaska, a Granite High School alumnus, would win the 1974 Utah Open as a Weber State golfer and become a renowned golf teacher. In a 2021 podcast with former Nibley Park pro Jeff Waters, Malaska cited his relationships with superintendent Mark Ruff, as he planted trees and built bunkers, and pro Tom Sorensen, who nurtured him. Nibley “saved my life as a kid,” Malaska said. “I had a lot of things happen to me as a youth that were pretty tragic. Tom helped me through it and golf helped me through it.”

The weekend before they finished in the top 30 in the 2015 U.S. Open, Tony Finau and Daniel Summerhays joined several members of the extended Summerhays family, including future State Amateur champions Preston and Grace, in a Parent-Junior Scramble at Nibley. Zac Blair once teamed with Mike Jurca to shoot a 13-under-par 55 in the Nibley Park Best Ball. Waters gave Johnny Miller a putting lesson on the practice green and remembers how the likes of Dow Finsterwald and Billy Johnston stopped by the course in the early 1960s while in town for the Utah Open, then a PGA Tour event.

Eric Leckner, a first-round pick of the Utah Jazz, worked on the driving range to get playing privileges. CBS Sports broadcaster Jim Nantz, then working for KSL, still talks about competing in a Long Drive regional event at Nibley, with bleachers in back of the No. 6 tee that abuts 700 East. As the church president, Grant often teed off at 6 a.m. in the summers, as detailed in a NauvooTimes.com column.

Celebrities aside, the real fabric of Nibley Park is found in the men’s and ladies’ leagues, populated by working people who savor the environment.

“I just always loved that course,” said Alice Edman, who learned to play in the popular ladies’ league more than 40 years ago and has kept coming back.

Trent Foster, a men’s league regular for 30 years, likes to remind his sons, Davis and Cole, “You realize the green you’re standing on right now is 100 years old?”

Editor’s note • This story is available to Salt Lake Tribune subscribers only. Thank you for supporting local journalism.