Bradley Klein, a golf write, penned an article about this in a recent Golfweek issue.  North Dakota has golf courses somewhere other than Fargo. Okay, I knew that.  But I wasn’t aware of the Lewis & Clark Golf Trail.

Like the Robert Trent Jones Trail and the Brainerd Lakes Golf Trail, North Dakota has its own Trail with 200 holes of golf from Bismark to Mendora.  The Trail highlights twenty courses with names like Square Butte (I bet this course is the “butt” of a lot of golf jokes), Medicine Hole (does that mean we drink after each hole, for medicinal purposes of course) and Bully Pulpit (my favorite).

According to the National Golf Foundation, there are 105 golf courses in the state, with the majority of them being nine-holers. Someone told me once that states like Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa and North Dakota tend to have a lot of nine-hole courses because the forty acres or so that is needed for a short course is just a ¼ section (160 acres is a section), of someone’s farmland.

That North Dakota Office of Tourism is a big promoter of the Lewis & Clark Golf Trail (I’d suggest they give the website an upgrade if they want to show it off) and it is currently one of the few states that actually has a low unemployment level (4%), and an expected budget surplus.  In addition, people are moving back into the state because of the growing oil and gas industry.

Most of the courses on the Lewis & Clark Golf Trail are near the State’s eastern border, but one of the leading courses is Bully Pulpit Golf Course in Medora.  At par 75.4 and a slope 138 from the black tees, it’s a formidable challenge to any golfer.

Interested to hear comments from anyone that has played some of these North Dakota courses.

Check out the trail here.