Brasstown Valley Resort Golf Course

Brasstown Valley Resort Golf Course winds through 503 acres of Blue Ridge Mountain terrain in Towns County, Georgia, navigating wildlife preserves, ponds, and streams against a backdrop of peaks rising to 2,150 feet. Denis Griffiths designed the championship layout to complement the natural contours of the land, and Golf Digest and Leading Golf Courses of America have recognized it as one of the top courses in the state.

Brasstown Valley Resort Golf Course opened in April 1995 in Young Harris, Georgia, as the centerpiece of a $27 million resort development on state-owned land in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Towns County. The 210-acre Denis Griffiths design was built on a site with 10,000 years of human history — land that was home to a Cherokee village before European settlement — and developed as among the environmentally sensitive championship courses in the United States. The course was designed by Denis Griffiths, a Georgia-based golf architect who shaped the layout to fit the rugged mountain terrain while minimizing disturbance to the natural environment.

The 210-acre footprint encompasses dramatic elevation changes, forested ridges, and creek corridors characteristic of the Georgia highlands, with holes routed through the natural contours of the land rather than imposing conventional flat fairway construction on mountain topography. The $27 million resort project was championed by Georgia Governor Zell Miller, whose hometown of Young Harris is located immediately adjacent to the resort property. Miller, whose family had deep roots in the Towns County community, supported the development as an economic driver for a rural mountain region with limited non-agricultural revenue sources.

The resort opened on state-owned land under a private operating arrangement, a model that has allowed it to function as a full-service mountain resort while preserving the underlying public land. Brasstown Valley Resort sits in the shadow of Brasstown Bald, Georgia's highest peak at 4,784 feet, and the mountain terrain that frames the course shapes both its visual character and the playing conditions that golfers encounter. The elevation changes within the course itself produce uneven lies, dramatic approach angles, and wind variations that make distance management more complex than on flatter layouts.

The resort facility encompasses a lodge, conference center, spa, and equestrian facilities in addition to the golf course, positioning it as a full-service destination within Georgia's Blue Ridge Mountain tourism corridor. The golf course has drawn players from across the southeastern United States and been recognized as one of Georgia's top mountain golf destinations since its opening.