Despite being played in Great Britain for centuries, it wasn’t until the late 1890s that the game of golf took hold in this country.

During this decade, hundreds of golf courses were built across the United States, including the Altoona Cricket Club, Cresson Springs Resort and the Bedford Springs Resort in our local area.

While golf historians acknowledge the 1890s as the dawning age of golf in America, there are a few recorded instances of casual golf being earlier in places like South Carolina, New York and Massachusetts.

These instances typically involved golfers who had become familiar with the game while visiting England or Scotland.

Though determining exactly who swung the first club in America is probably impossible, one of the earliest occurrences of golf being played in this country happened in the 1870s — right here in Altoona.

When preparing materials for Altoona’s Centennial celebration in 1949, local newspaper columnist Os Figard detailed how golf was first introduced to the city.

Like nearly everything associated with early Altoona history, the Pennsylvania Railroad Company was prominently involved, and all the happenings would take place in the heart of this city.

The land at Chestnut Avenue and Seventh Street, on which the Pennsylvania Railroad Cricket Field would later be located, was first purchased by the railroad company in 1846. This land had been used in earlier decades to grow corn and vegetables, but the newly-formed PRR would utilize the field to store lumber needed for construction of the many railroad shops that were soon to be built.

By the 1850s, numerous PRR horse stables were built by the company on this same property. During the winter months around this time, the lower parts of the field were flooded and converted into outdoor ice-skating ponds for use by local residents.

As the PRR expanded its operations in the 1860s, the shops were booming and looking to upgrade their engine repair capabilities. In 1870, railroad officials were able to recruit a group of approximately 50 expert engine-repairmen from England to relocate to Altoona. Their work was quickly deemed a success, and the men soon acclimated to American life.

In their spare time, the Englishmen loved to play cricket, a favorite pastime in their native land. However, the men were unable to find many worthy opponents, and the game fizzled out after just a few years.

Undaunted, the Englishmen began clearing land (near the current location of UPMC Altoona and Cricket Field Plaza) for another of their favorite sports — golf.

By 1876, the group had constructed a rudimentary 12-hole course on this property and added local Altoona-native Robert Fay, son of PRR company doctor Jonathan Fay, to their group (Fay would become one of central Pennsylvania’s finest golfers by the turn of the century).

Though the course was crudely laid out, it was popular with the men from England, and their outings caused quite a stir among local residents who had never seen anyone playing golf.

About this same time, the sport of baseball began exploding in popularity and the old golf field was eventually overtaken by what would become the Cricket Field ballpark, a local landmark that stood until the late 1950s.

The game of golf would vanish from the local scene for a couple of decades, but the sport reappeared in the city when the Altoona Cricket Club golf links were built near Juniata in 1897. It was during this time that the sport began to flourish.

Golf has remained popular in Blair County, and across the country, ever since.