Bandon Crossings Golf Course

Bandon Crossings Golf Course is a Dan Hixson design opened in 2007 as the area's affordable alternative to the links courses at Bandon Dunes Resort, routing through forested terrain and wetlands with a style more rooted in inland design than the oceanfront links that define the Bandon region's worldwide reputation. At 6,855 yards with a rating of 74.0 and slope of 139, it offers a genuine test for visiting golfers seeking a break from the coastal wind.

Bandon Crossings Golf Course is an 18-hole public course in Bandon, Oregon, designed by Dan Hixson and opened in 2007 on a former sheep and cattle ranch — making it the first 18-hole course Hixson designed in what would become a distinguished Pacific Northwest practice. The course was developed by Rex and Cala Smith of Eugene, who owned a vacation house near Bandon and recognized that the area surrounding the Bandon Dunes Golf Resort had created substantial golf tourism without providing an affordable 18-hole option for the many visitors who sought a quality round at a more accessible price point than the destination resort offered. Golf Magazine recognized Bandon Crossings as a top ten new course in the year of its opening.

Dan Hixson brought to his first 18-hole commission the heathland design philosophy that would define his subsequent work — courses that use native grasses, minimal irrigation, and natural terrain to create playing environments connected to their landscape rather than maintained against it. At Bandon Crossings, he worked with the ranch terrain adjacent to the Coquille River to create an inland course that felt related to the heathland and links character of the nearby Bandon Dunes courses without imitating them. The former ranch land provided open terrain with natural undulation and the agricultural character of the southern Oregon coast interior, allowing Hixson to route a course that played with rather than against the existing landforms.

The course describes itself as offering "heathland golf in the great British tradition" — a characterization that reflects Hixson's design approach and the particular look and feel of a course maintained with natural ground conditions, minimal supplemental irrigation, and native vegetation corridors between holes. This approach creates a playing experience distinct from the parkland and resort courses that dominated American public golf during the same period, with firm, fast conditions that change the strategic character of every hole depending on the season and weather. Bandon, the small coastal community where both Bandon Crossings and the Bandon Dunes resort operate, has transformed into among the significant golf destinations in North America since Mike Keiser opened the first Bandon Dunes course in 1999.

Bandon Crossings occupies a different market position within that destination — accessible daily-fee golf rather than resort-destination rates — serving both the golf tourists who come primarily for the Bandon Dunes resort and the local community of golfers who need a quality course at everyday prices. The Smith family's original motivation — providing an affordable 18-hole option near their vacation home — captures the community function that Bandon Crossings has fulfilled alongside its role in the broader Bandon golf destination. Hixson's subsequent work has included Wine Valley Golf Club in Washington and further Oregon projects, with Bandon Crossings representing the beginning of a design career that established him as one of the Pacific Northwest's most important golf course architects of the early twenty-first century.