The golf course that paid for the zoo next door

The fairways in Huntington Woods and the lions across the street share one donor. Horace Rackham had been an early investor in the Ford Motor Company, and he and his wife Mary gave their money away all over metro Detroit. Two of their gifts ended up next door to each other: a golf course and the Detroit Zoo.

In 1923 the Rackhams bought 150 acres from the Baker Land Company. They hired Donald Ross, the most famous golf course designer of the day, to lay out eighteen holes. Then they handed the finished course to the city of Detroit in 1924, with one rule written into the deal: it had to stay public, for the use of anyone, forever. The first round was played on May 19, 1925. Detroit still owns it, and anyone can book a tee time — a rare thing for a Ross course.

Rackham also holds a real piece of civil-rights history. Joe Louis, the Detroit boxer who held the heavyweight title for twelve years, played and taught here. For decades when most clubs shut Black golfers out, Rackham was a home base for them. In 1968 Ben Davis became the head pro here — one of the first Black men in the country to hold that job at a city course — and later the first Black member of the Michigan PGA.

So the next time someone says golf and the public good don’t mix, point them here: a Donald Ross course that anyone can walk onto, paid for by the same hands that built the elephant house you can hear roaring from the back nine.