Rea Park: Golf for Everyone

Rea Park: Golf for Everyone

By: Suzy Dunning

 Artifacts, memorabilia, and photographs can reveal stories of the past and help us to discover a connection to our own place in time. Few historical treasures give us such a personal look into a person’s life or cultural history as scrapbooks. Alongside the multitude of scrapbooks in the archives of the Vigo County History Center is one that belonged to Mrs. Daisy Hyatt.

 Daisy’s scrapbook is much the same as many others from the 1920’s. Tucked and taped to the fragile black pages are small tokens from the world in which she lived. Tiny pencils dangle from threads attached to dance cards. Greeting cards are pasted in randomly beside childhood photos. A few pages into the scrapbook, you’ll find a wedding announcement from her marriage to William Hyatt in November of 1924. Following an order of events through the holiday cards and the January birthday wishes, it was in the spring of 1925 Daisy penciled in next to a Rea Park scorecard, “I took up golf”, below that, “all in vain”. According to the scorecard, Daisy who went by her middle name Ellen, played a terrible game that day, scoring a total of 94 in 9 holes.

 A grocer and prominent citizen of Terre Haute, William S. Rea, left $100,000 in trust funds to the city of Terre Haute for the purchase of the 160 acres of land for what would become Rea Park. Although the 18-hole golf course and stunning park grounds were opened in 1922, it wasn’t until 1925 that the park’s immaculate clubhouse was opened. Geraldine, Rea’s wife, had the clubhouse built at the cost of $40,000 in memory of her late husband.

 Architects Johnson, Miller, Miller and Yeager took the task of designing the clubhouse as one of the finest in in the country. It was certainly fine enough to draw a crowd upon its opening. Fine enough to interest even our amateur golfer, young Daisy Hyatt.

Rea Park scorecard found in 1925 scrapbook of local woman.