The Eberhart-Petro Municipal Golf Course

1929 — PRESENT

The city's golf course is named for the two men who gave the city its ground — a Ball Band industrialist and the mayor of his year: The Eberhart-Petro Municipal Golf Course, at 801 North State Street on the river's north side, opened in 1929 with nine holes on the south side of the St. Joe River and expanded to eighteen holes in 1949, with four river crossings built into the course — the course's own account, carried in its descriptive record. One lone 2023 listing gives the eighteen-hole expansion's year as 1994 against the same text's 1949 in three other listings; it stands printed as a probable typographical error, not a second date. The course is named after its founders, George Eberhart and Mason Petro: Frederick George Eberhart, the rubber-works industrialist whose estate and parkland gifts run through this record (Religion and Communities carry the estate whole), and Mason L. Petro, elected the city's mayor on 5 November 1929 — the dedication year's mayor, on the government record. The ground had a golfing past before the city had it: on the golf-history record, attributed at that strength, the St. Joe Valley Country Club, organized in 1900 with nine holes on sixty-five acres, stood on the property; the land was sold in 1911; the Miami Country Club opened on the same property in May 1916 and closed in 1920, when Frederick George Eberhart bought the ground; and Eberhart in time donated the course to the city, keeping a bluff plot above it for the Eberhart Mansion, designed 1929 and occupied 1931. In the Depression the WPA built stonework and drainage systems in the municipal course, as it did across the park system. Today's course is eighty-nine acres, par seventy, 5,924 yards, four of its holes teeing off over the river — the only golf course in Mishawaka, on the present record, its season running March to November.

Sources:

1. The Eberhart-Petro course's own descriptive record, carried in its listings 2019–2023 — opened 1929 with nine holes; eighteen in 1949 with four river crossings; named for its founders George Eberhart and Mason Petro; the lone 1994 reading in one 2023 listing.
2. Golf-history forum record (golfclubatlas.com), citing the newspapers and the Eberhart Mansion's own account — the St. Joe Valley Country Club (1900), the land's sale (1911), the Miami Country Club (1916–1920), Eberhart's purchase and donation, the mansion plot.
3. Peter J. De Kever, Mishawaka: A History — WPA stonework and drainage at the course; Mayor Petro's election, 5 November 1929.