Hugh Nicol, considered one of the 19th century’s best professional baseball players, was the first full-time Athletic Director at Purdue University (1906-1916). In 1909, he asked William V. Stuart, one of Lafayette, Indiana’s well-known attorneys, why Lafayette didn’t have a golf course.

After that conversation, Mr. Stuart met with a number of local movers and shakers at the Lafayette Club on Columbia Street. They planned a “new family-friendly club complete with golf course and other recreations on land once known as Reynolds Pasture,” and on November 9,  1909, the Country Club of Lafayette, Indiana was incorporated.

The original and current clubhouse was built in 1910 by William D. Mann, who later became a prolific Chicago architect.

The club’s objective, as was originally written, “Shall be to carry on a pleasure resort, the erection and maintenance of a Country Club, boating and bathing houses in connection therewith, the purchase or leasing of lands in Tippecanoe County, Indiana, to be owned and used by said Country Club as its grounds…”

Source: A History of the Lafayette Country Club – Celebrating Tradition, 1909-2009, written by Joanne P. Willis