Westport in Brief!

EverythingWestport.com

Sunday, May 1, 2016

photos/EverythingWestport.com except as noted

 

Westport Land Trust recognized at 4th Annual Massachusetts Service and Volunteer Day at the State House.

 

Illustrated lecture explores southcoast region’s first golf courses.

 

WLCT’s Brendan Buckless takes further steps to protect conserved forestland.

 

Please show your support by voting YES to Amendment 38 at Westport Town Meeting, Tuesday May 3rd at 7:00 p.m.,

Westport High School Auditorium.

 

Letter: Westport needs Article 38 to protect farm-related activities.

 

Letter: Support Westport agriculture by voting 'yes' on Article 38.

 

 

 

Westport Land Trust recognized at 4th Annual Massachusetts Service and Volunteer Day at the State House.

EverythingWestport.com

Monday, April 25, 2016

 

Westport, Massachusetts – Last Thursday, April 14, Westport Land Conservation Trust outreach and stewardship coordinator, Brendan Buckless, gave a brief speech to the 4th Annual Massachusetts Service and Volunteer Day regarding his 2014-2015 service term as an Environmental Educator for the Buzzards Bay Coalition on behalf of the Massachusetts Service Alliance and Commonwealth Corps to members of the Massachusetts Senate and House of Representatives. 

 

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Excerpt from the speech: 

“During my service I directly engaged over 2,000 unique youth in more than 100 outdoor exploration programs and over 50 families in more than 30 programs that fostered connections to the local environment while supporting increased school engagement. Additionally, I leveraged ten volunteers that educated the general public about the Coalition and engaged people of all ages about their awareness and connection to the Bay.” 

 

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Above, from the left: Senator Michael J. Rodrigues of Westport; Brendan P. Buckless of Westport, unnamed; Representative Paul A. Schmid of Westport.

 

About the Westport Land Conservation Trust 

Since its founding in 1972, the Westport Land Conservation Trust has assisted landowners in protecting more than 4,000 acres in Westport, Massachusetts. WLCT is a private non-governmental organization dedicated to local land conservation on behalf of the Westport community. The organization accepts gifts of land and conservation restrictions on land, and assists farm owners in preserving farmland with agricultural preservation restrictions. 

 

 

 

Illustrated lecture explores southcoast region’s first golf courses.

EverythingWestport.com

Sunday, May 1, 2016 

Photos | EverythingWestport.com

 

By Robert Barboza 

Special Correspondent to EverythingWestport.com

 

Dartmouth Historical & Arts Society president Bob Harding presented an interesting look at the history of the region’s first four golf courses at an April 24 lecture entitled “Telling the Old, Old Story… of Golf on the South Coast” that was of particular interest to the older golfers in the audience at the Russells Mills Schoolhouse. 

 

Using old photos and deeds, period newspaper accounts of course openings, and other evidence, Harding painted a concise picture of the early days of the golfing industry in the South Coast by examining the roots of the Reservation Golf Club in Mattapoisett, founded in 1895; the Hawthorne Golf Course, circa 1897, in west New Bedford; the Fairhaven Golf Club, a course laid out by the club’s golf professional, David Findlay a few years later in 1900 beside the Acushnet River; and the Country Club of New Bedford which opened in 1902 on 86 acres between State Road and Hathaway Road in North Dartmouth. 

 

Inset: original nine-hole layout of New Bedford Country Club in 1902.

 

Harding is a veteran golfer who grew up on Alden Avenue, off old Westport Road, a neighborhood known as Cedar Dell, not far from where the future Paskamansett Links was laid out long ago on some pastureland off State Road and Faunce Corner Road. He has also been around the links at the Country Club of New Bedford a few times since his youth. 

 

Paskamansett Links was plowed under to build the Dartmouth Mall; noted golf professional and instructor Greg Denehy holds the course record of 65.

 

“I played a lot of golf for many, many years,” Harding noted at the start of his talk. “It’s been a lifelong love affair for me,” he said of the sport. 

 

Research into the area’s first handful of golf courses has been like patiently finding pieces of an old “history” puzzle, Harding said. “The search goes on… you’re never finished finding pieces of the puzzle,” he explained.  

 

Early course openings were big news in those days, so he has found plenty of newspaper accounts of those first few country clubs to document his reports.  He encourages audience members at all historical and arts society talks to share old photographs, family documents, and town records with local history researchers, to add to the society’s research databases. 

 

 

In order of age, here are the first four golf courses: 

The Reservation Golf Club of Mattapoisett was the region’s first golf links, being opened in 1895 by summer resident Charles A. King of Boston, a successful brewer and inventor. The English immigrant’s house in Mattapoisett was a grand building known as The Reservation, which later became the first clubhouse, and the name of the golf course. 

 

In 1887 Charles King bought up property at the head of the harbor near the mouth of the Mattapoisett River and built a large summer home, the Reservation, so named as this area at the mouth of the river had been a favorite camping ground for the Wampanoags in years past. Mr. King was a golfer and laid out a course that continues to this day. Since then, it has been known as the Reservation Golf Club.

 

King owned lots of land in Mattapoisett, near the ocean, and by 1900, was the town’s biggest payer of property taxes. The golf course was carved out from a large parcel of land off the main road, bisected by an active railroad line, Harding said, using slide show photos of maps and newspaper clippings to help tell the story.  

 

Inset: Dartmouth Historical & Arts Society president Bob Harding, Robert Harding  

Photo | Robert Barboza

   

The 1895 membership dues for the country club, including privileges to play on the nine hole golf course were $30 for a family, $10 for an individual, and 50 cents per day for visitors, he reported. Things went smoothly for the first few years, with the sport becoming popular among both sexes.  

 

The only drawback was the rail line running through the course. In 1905, one King worker was killed and another seriously injured when a passing train hit a wagon; players abandoned their games to rush off and help the stricken workmen, a period newspaper report indicated. 

 

The Reservation Golf Club was a par 38, 2600 yard venue.

 

Hawthorn Golf Course was the second set of links around here, opening in 1897 on land off Rockdale, Hawthorn and Allens Streets, and operated by David Findlay, one of the famous “golfing Findlays” from these parts. His brother Alex (A.H.) Findlay was a pro who competed with the legendary Harry Vardon in the old days, Harding noted. 

 

You played 18 holes by playing the Hawthorn Golf Course golf course three times in a row.

 

Alex Findlay “is considered to be the Father of American golf by many people,” Harding said. “He designed hundreds of golf courses all over America” in the early days of the sport, he added. 

 

A June 1900 spread in the Boston Herald sports pages came with a half dozen drawings of men and women golfers, giving a good visual of the fashions and equipment sported in those days. 

 

Vardon, of course, is the legendary six-time British Open winner who notably payed an exhibition match at Hawthorn in 1900, where his https://tse1.mm.bing.net/th?&id=A68435a7717f105256fc69a42f6a272a4&w=123&h=185&c=0&pid=1.9&rs=0&p=0&r=0 brother David Vardon was the club pro, Harding explained. One newspaper review called the course “a charming bit of the landscape” to be enjoyed by visiting golfers. 

 

Inset: Harry Vardon.

 

A slide of a period advertisement showed David’s patented design for a new style steel golf club head; scorecards showed par was originally called “the bogey figure” at the turn of the century, Harding pointed out.  

 

The third golf course in this region was the six-hole Fairhaven Golf Club, located near Riverside Cemetery, off Main Street beside the Acushnet River.

 

The Fairhaven Golf club was organized in May, 1900. In the Spring of 1901, the club secured a lease of the Dexter and Taber estates on the west side of North Main street, a little south of Riverside Cemetery, and extended to the Acushnet River, comprising about 14 acres of rolling land adapted to a golf course of six holes, which was laid out by David Findlay of Dartmouth, the golf professional.

 

These links were considered “very sporty and a fair natural course.”

 

During the season of 1902, Mr. Dexter built for the Club a “delightfully located Club House on the top of Dolly Hill,” where formerly stood the old grist windmill, overlooking the entire course, and commanding a “fine view of the Acushnet River.”

Mrs. Rhodes had also given to the Club an elegant silver cup, as a Club Trophy to be annually competed for by the lady members of the club. This trophy was first won and held by Mrs. Edgar R. Lewis, of New Bedford.

 

During the season of 1903, the Club added 3 tennis courts on the land on the east side of North Main Street, opposite to the links.

 

New balls were $3.50 a dozen in those days, and you could get reconditioned balls even cheaper. 

 

Fairhaven Golf Club’s longest hole was perhaps 300 yards, an uncommon length – remember, everybody was walking the fairways at the turn of the century!

 

Holes were created “with interesting layouts” featuring dog legs, sand traps, and the occasional apple orchard. 

 

Hawthorn Golf Club closed when New Bedford Country Club opened.

Eventually, the New Bedford upper classes decided to move on from Hawthorn Golf Course, and developed plans for a new course and country club in North Dartmouth, just over the city line, in a triangle of land bounded by State Road, Hathaway Road, and Slocum Road. It would be called the Country Club of New Bedford, organizers decided.

 

Hawthorn Golf Course closed when New Bedford Country Club opened in 1902. 

 

The Club had a modest beginning that took place before the turn of the century. Read more of the CCNB history.

 

The original course was nine holes until the club purchased land on the east side of Slocum Road and added an additional six holes. These outer six holes were designed by O'Grady, Mitchell, and Gilholm. Willie Park, probably the most famous golf architect at the turn of the century and recent Golf Hall of Fame Inductee, had planned, designed, and supervised the building of their original nine holes. In 1924, the renowned golf architect, Donald Ross, redesigned the course changing the original nine holes on the club side of Slocum Road into 12 holes and eventually making CCNB into an 18-hole golf course.

 

The original club was located in the West End of New Bedford bordering on Hawthorne, Brigham, and Allen streets and continuing out to Rockdale Avenue. Several local enthusiasts of golf formed the Club. It was called the Hawthorne Club. The six-hole layout became so popular that the club founders decided the course was too short and crowded. They closed the original course and moved to its present site.

 

Although some were pessimistic about this move, within 16 months after its 1902 incorporation, the Club had 350 members and a waiting list. The original Board of Governors, all prominent people in the New Bedford area, and key financial contributors to the club in its early years, consisted of Club President John Bullard, William E. Hatch, Edward S. Brown, Edward T. Pierce, Oliver Prescott, William West, Clarence A. Cook, Frederick D. Stetson, John Duff and George Cherry.

 

https://tse1.mm.bing.net/th?&id=OIP.M1ad40a7095e7ec32c527c963768c7d13o0&w=263&h=264&c=0&pid=1.9&rs=0&p=0&r=0“All of the elite of New Bedford were members there… the women were associate members,” Harding said. A group of old photographs taken at the course showed well-to-do white men smartly dressed in white shirts and ties driving gutta percha” golf balls (pictured right) playing the scenic links alongside tall Victorian women in long skirts and smart little hats.  

 

Most of the land was owned by Abraham Perry, and the course was laid out “on 86 acres of rolling land, with hills and valleys, and ledges here and there,” Harding read from a newspaper report on the 1902 grand opening. Laid out by David Findlay, “Frederick Law Olmstead was the landscape engineer” for the nine-hole par 40 course, he noted. 

 

Olmstead is a nationally known landscape designer who created New York City’s famed Central Park; closer to home, he was also the designer of Buttonwood Park in New Bedford. 

 

Original plans for the Country Club included tennis courts, a croquet lawn, and some accounts suggest a stable and trails for horseback riding; a leased nearby parcel would be the trap course for members to enjoy shooting clay pigeons. Flocks of sheep were used to keep the fairway grass at optimum length.

 

Among the highlights of the early days of the country club was the 1907 exhibition match played there by golf greats Alec Ross, Jerome Travers, Gilbert Nichols and Richard Kimball, Harding reported. Alec’s brother, legendary course designer Donald Ross, was reportedly “interested” in designing the course’s second nine holes, and he eventually got the job, the historian said.  

 

Harding’s talk concluded with concrete evidence of his familiarity with the Country Club of New Bedford, being a 50-plus year-old photograph of him in golf togs, with a beaming smile, that year’s Junior Amateur Tourney champ at the club. 

 

Above: aerial of Paskamansett Links, Dartmouth; now the Dartmouth Mall.

 

 

  

WLCT  employee takes further steps to protect conserved forestland.

Brendan Buckless successfully completed the 3-day Training Workshop for the Keystone Project.

The Keystone Project is designed to stimulate forest landowners and community opinion leaders to be advocates of sound forest conservation.

EverythingWestport.com

Sunday, May 1, 2016

 

Outreach and Stewardship Coordinator, Brendan Buckless, of Westport Land Conservation Trust successfully completed the 3-day Training Workshop for the Keystone Project, held at the Harvard Forest in Petersham, April 14 -17.    

 

In ecology, a keystone species is one whose impacts on its environment are larger and greater than would be expected from one species. The Keystone Project invests education and reference materials in important, keystone people making a large impact at their local level. The training covers subjects such as forest ecology and management, wildlife management, land protection, and community outreach. In exchange for the training and take-home resources, graduates of the program, called Cooperators, agree to return to their communities and volunteer at least 30-hours of their time towards projects that promote forest and wildlife conservation. For more information about the Keystone Project, visit: http://masskeystone.net/.   

 

The Keystone Project is designed to stimulate forest landowners and community opinion leaders to be advocates of sound forest conservation, and to help inform the land management and conservation decisions of their friends, neighbors, organizations, and communities.  Keystone Cooperators can be very effective in doing this, since they are well-connected community leaders.  Other past Cooperator projects have included permanently conserving their own land, initiating a forest landowner cooperative, promoting management on municipal and conservation lands, writing newspaper articles, hosting educational events, and improving their own properties for wildlife, recreation, and timber.  

 

More than three-fourths of all woodland in Massachusetts is owned by thousands of private families and individuals. Much of this land is at risk of conversion to developed uses. It is important to reach woodland owners as well as communities and land trusts with information on the care of their land. Keystone training is designed to provide Cooperators with skills and information to better engage in this important activity at the local level. 

 

The Keystone Project is organized by the University of Massachusetts Department of Environmental Conservation and UMass Extension, with support from the Harvard Forest, MA Division of Fisheries and Wildlife, the MA DCR Service Forestry Program, and the Leo S. Walsh Foundation.

 

For more information on forest conservation or Keystone, contact:

Brendan Buckless, Outreach and Stewardship Coordinator; Westport Land Conservation Trust at 508.636.9228 or email: Brendan@WestportLandTrust.org. Or Paul Catanzaro, Extension Assistant Professor; University of Massachusetts at 413.545.4839 or email: cat@umext.umass.edu.          

 

 

 

Please show your support by voting YES to Article 38 at Westport Town Meeting, Tuesday May 3rd at 7:00 p.m., Westport High School Auditorium.

EverythingWestport.com

Sunday, May 1, 2016

 

Letter to the Editor: To all Westport residents (and those who enjoy reading this stuff),

 

Thank you to everyone who participated in Thursday night’s Community Information Session regarding Article 38 on the Westport Town Warrant. Over 60 people assembled at the Westport Grange representing a broad spectrum of neighbors, members of town and state government, farmers and other professionals in the agricultural community.

 

The evening included open discussion and information from experts including Doug Gillespie, former Commissioner of Agriculture for the Massachusetts Department of Agricultural Resources and current President of the Massachusetts Farm Bureau. Questions regarding the origin of the language and definitions used in Article 38 and how thoroughly both had been researched were addressed. The definitions for Agriculture and subordinate/incidental agricultural activities such as Agri-tourism and Agr-entertainment were derived from the MA General Laws (Chapter 61A sections 1 & 2 and Chapter 40a Section 3 and the Code of Mass. Regulations [CMR] 330.22.02) which have been established and thoroughly vetted at the state level.

 

Concern was raised that Agri-Tourism, while a valuable and necessary tool for farmers to expand their consumer base and ensure economic viability of their farm, should not become equivalent to the principle act of farming. Article 38 addresses that concern by following the language of CMR 330.22.02 which defines Agri-tourism and Agri-entertainment as subordinate activities “designed to enhance the agricultural viability of the farm operations.”

 

Perhaps the most prominent theme of the evening was the need to provide our Farms and Town Government with relevant, contemporary framework to address the realities of agriculture and its subordinate activities in today’s social and business climate.

 

As a Select Board Member stated, Westport urgently needs to ‘pick up where we left off’ with our initial ‘Right To Farm By-Law’ which was enacted in 2005 and has not been updated in more than a decade. Article 38 would bring the definition of Agriculture into the 21st century and move the existing Right to Farm By-Law into the Zoning By-Laws where it offers town boards more traction, oversight and a clearer process for addressing the issues facing todays farms while preserving the checks and balances needed to ensure that first,  the community has a voice in determining the appropriateness of subordinate farm activities and second, farmers face a lower risk of facing litigation when there are disputes.

 

At the end of two hours attendees left the meeting with a clearer understanding of the issues that Article 38 addresses, the origins of the language there in and particularly the need to modernize how we as a community can best support and facilitate the tradition and future of Agriculture and our citizens’ Right To Farm along with the peaceful character of our beautiful town.

 

Please show your support by voting YES to Article 38 at Westport Town Meeting, Tuesday May 3rd at 7pm Westport High School Auditorium, 19 Main Road, Westport

 

Video of the meeting can be viewed on Westport Cable Access channel 192 at the following days/times:

Friday 4/29 at   8:00 PM; Saturday 4/30 at 1:30 PM; Sunday  5/1 at 5:30 PM; Monday  5/2 at 2:30 PM ; and Tuesday  5/3 at 8:30 AM

 

Sincerely,

 

The Russell Family

 

 

 

Letter: Westport needs Article 38 to protect farm-related activities.

EverythingWestport.com

Sunday, May 1, 2016

 

Westport has supported “right to farm” in its bylaws since 2005 as many feel farm activities are part of what makes the town unique. But the current law only speaks to growing crops and animals. Article 38 sensibly expands that definition to allow farm markets, fairs and festivals, education and farm tourism.

 

That includes activities we take for granted, but are now under legal assault in ways that will inevitably limit adults’ and children’s ability to get close to farms and nature.

 

Article 38 grandfathers Westport’s traditional farm-related activities. It should pass with overwhelming support.

 

Peter Kastner

Westport

 

 

 

Letter: Support Westport agriculture by voting 'yes' on Article 38.

EverythingWestport.com

Sunday, May 1, 2016

 

Over the years, we have enjoyed many “farm based” activities that aren’t strictly farming, whether it be the Harvest Festival, concerts at the Town Farm, hayrides at the vineyard, or farm to table dinners.

 

These activities entertain our neighbors and draw tourist dollars into town, providing revenue for restaurants, ice cream stands, and our caterers, among others. This is a great benefit given the economy

.

There are a variety of initiatives underway to support agriculture in Westport. Warrant Article 38, which better defines and clearly legitimizes these traditional activities is one of them and is very important. Please join us in voting yes on Article 38.

 

Russ and Suze Craig

Westport

 

 

 

 

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