The Buzz: Everything about Poston Butte Golf Club is relatively new, but then, the history already was built in. The course, which is part of the Anthem at Merrill Ranch master-planned community in a booming area of Pinal County, is named in recognition of Charles Poston, who is regarded as the “Father of Arizona” because of his role in achieving statehood. Designed by Gary Panks, the course opened in 2007 and quickly became popular as the only 18-hole golf facility in Florence.
Panks has a particular knack for taking a flat piece of land and shaping it into interesting, rolling golf terrain. That holds true with this design. Poston Butte offers player-friendly wide fairways, but provides a challenge with its traditional bunkering around multi-tiered greens. “It’s amazing how much movement Gary created on a flat piece of property,” its original general manager Lon Grundy said. “As a golfer, you want to be able to walk away and remember certain holes on a course and I think that’s the case.” Most impressive is the quality and variety of par-3 holes, which play at 235, 166, 193 and 169 yards from the back tees. That includes the course’s signature hole, the 17th, which features an island green and plays at 169 yards. From the tee, it is reminiscent of the 17th at TPC Sawgrass, which plays at 132 yards but leaves PGA Tour pros trembling during the Players Championship. Poston Butte has five sets of tees, stretching to 7,282 yards from the tips. It also offers some excellent views of the Superstition Mountains and Walker Butte and a glimpse of a pyramid-shaped fire temple that Poston discovered more than a century ago among Indian ruins.
Poston, who was Arizona’s first delegate to Congress and helped convince Abraham Lincoln to create the territory of Arizona in 1863, dedicated his personal wealth to building a monument on the site and constructing a pathway leading to the resurrected temple. In 1925, 23 years after his death, Poston was buried at the summit of what became Poston Butte. Poston was regarded as a visionary yet failed entrepreneur who set up a bustling mining camp in the abandoned Spanish presidio at Tubac and acted as de facto mayor and judge. He was a western pioneer, explorer, politician, journalist and expert at Indian affairs. The course that bears his name helps to prolong the legacy of a man whose life ended unfittingly. The “Father of Arizona” died in June 1902 at age 75, virtually broke and completely alone.