Pikewood National Golf Club

Mining executives acquired this Appalachian forestland for its limestone — to be extracted a century from now — and in the meantime built a walking-only course through waterfalls, hardwood canopy, and natural rock outcroppings outside Morgantown. The par-3 fifth, with its peanut-shaped green framed by a reflection pond and cascading waterfall, is worth the trip alone. Slope rating: 155.

Pikewood National Golf Club is among the unusual and compelling private golf experiences in America, a course built entirely by the engineering and construction resources of a mining company on limestone-rich forestland above Morgantown, West Virginia. What began as a recreational project on land earmarked for eventual mining became a course ranked among the finest in West Virginia, designed in the tradition of the Golden Age architects and built without a professional golf architect's blueprint. The story of Pikewood National begins in 2000, when John Raese and Bob Gwynne, officers of a mining company that had recently acquired a parcel of limestone-rich forest above Morgantown, decided to build a golf course on the land while they waited for the hundred-year timeline of sustainable limestone extraction to run its course. Using company engineers and construction equipment — and guidance from veteran tour professionals Johnny Pott and Dow Finsterwald — Raese and Gwynne spent nearly a decade creating a course from the rugged mountain terrain.

The result opened in 2003 and quickly attracted attention far beyond what its unconventional origins might have suggested. The course is situated high on a mesa in a mountain setting, and the routing takes full advantage of the dramatic topography. A natural waterfall became the backdrop for the par-3 fifth hole and the linchpin of the entire routing, with the course playing along bluffs, through forest, over rapids, and around a gulch on the hook-shaped par-5 eighth hole. The landscape is genuinely dramatic — not the manufactured drama of resort golf, but the authentic visual power of an Appalachian mountain forest interrupted by limestone bluffs and natural watercourses.

The design philosophy at Pikewood National was explicitly modeled on the great architects of the Golden Age — C.B. Macdonald, Alister MacKenzie, and their contemporaries who built courses that worked with the natural terrain rather than reshaping it for convenience. The result is a course that plays through the land rather than across it, with holes that feel discovered rather than invented. Golf Digest and other publications have recognized Pikewood National Golf Club as one of the best courses in West Virginia, a ranking that surprised those unfamiliar with the club but that regular visitors consider entirely justified.

The course plays to approximately 7,588 yards from the back tees, but the mountain terrain and elevation changes make yardage an imprecise guide to the actual challenge. The private nature of Pikewood National gives it a sense of exclusivity that matches its remote mountain setting. Access requires membership or an invitation from a member, creating a community of golfers who share both the passion for the game and an appreciation for the singular landscape that surrounds it. Today Pikewood National Golf Club stands as among the original golf courses in America — a design born of patience, engineering ingenuity, and a genuine love of the game, set in the forested mountain country of West Virginia where limestone lies beneath every fairway.