Author: Ali Slagle / Source: Atlas Obscura
In Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, you can check yourself into a campsite or RV resort with its own mini-golf course. You can drive for an hour along “the Grand Strand” on the state-long Highway 17 and hit a mini-golf course every few minutes.
You can choose between 50 courses within the span of 30 miles.Myrtle Beach may be the golf capital of the world, but it’s also the self-proclaimed mini-golf capital of the world. Not only are there more mini-golf courses per square mile than in any other city in the United States, but Myrtle Beach is also home turf for the ProMiniGolf Association’s annual “Master’s” tournament. For the past 20 years, the association’s president has even been working on getting the sport into the Olympics. Those are big dreams for a game that was initially considered “fake golf,” a diminutive version of “real golf” that was more attraction than sport.
Not many people visit Myrtle Beach solely for a mini-golf weekend as they do in heaps for regular golf, though they might consider it. There are storylines to follow, worlds to travel through, heights to ascend, and Easter eggs to surprise along the way.
One of the first mini-golf courses came to Myrtle Beach on Highway 17 in the heart of the city, adjacent to the first hotel and the amusement pavilion, in June 1930. It wasn’t alone—it was around this time when courses were opening across the U.
S. The sudden spark was thanks to Garnet Carter, who owned a golf course and inn at Fairyland, his property near Chattanooga, Tennessee.In 1926, Carter and his wife Frieda built a mini-golf course to keep wives and children entertained while men were off on his larger course. However, this wasn’t just a miniature version of regular golf, as others had been up to that point: There were hollowed-out logs, rock tunnels, fairy statues, and obstacles. In the end, it was more profitable than his other offering. After he patented and franchised “Tom Thumb Golf” in 1927, named after the English folk character, thousands of similar attractions popped up across the country.
But as with all leisure activities popular with Americans in the 1920s—mahjong, flagpole sitting—the Great Depression squashed mini-golf into a short-run fad. While pockets of Tom Thumbs and mom-and-pop courses could be found where space was cheap, in Myrtle Beach, real estate developers saw mini-golf as an important part of their grand, long-term plan.
Before the turn of the century, the development company Burroughs and Collins envisioned building a main street that would turn the sleepy fishing village into a “vacation playground” to rival Coney Island in New York or Atlantic City in New Jersey. It’d be close to the beach and full of reasonably priced attractions. In 1900, the company built the first railroad that connected Myrtle Beach to western and northern parts of the Carolinas.
Then, in 1926, the mogul John T. Woodside from Greenville, North Carolina, invested his millions to pave Highway 17, which was chosen as the burgeoning town’s main street. He also built Myrtle Beach’s first golf course.
Word of this vacationland spread swiftly—thanks in large part to the efforts and investments of the same developers. A 1935 promotional magazine called Myrtle Beach, Today and Tomorrow touted the town as “one of those ‘unique’ resorts where there is always something to do; someplace to go; something different to see other than the usual beach activities.” Mini-golf was one of those hyped attractions.
For businessmen, it also glimmered of a great idea to get rich quick. Mini-golf courses could be built and maintained at a fraction of the cost of regular courses (you don’t need as much land or labor, and you don’t have…
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