Wilshire Country Club

The Wilshire Country Club is an 18-hole private golf club on the West Coast of the United States, located in Los Angeles, California. The club in Hancock Park was founded 103 years ago in 1919 and its Norman Macbeth-designed course opened the following year. Around 1919, a few Los Angeles businessmen came up with the idea of constructing a golf course on this open Rancho La Brea land. G. Allan Hancock, one of Los Angeles' wealthiest men, was quite willing to lease the land to a group of men at a very modest rental amount and to include an option to purchase it. Raymond and Moye Stephens were a part of the initial group of businessmen, and they also happened to be Hancock's attorneys. The two Stephens brothers, along with the other men, were very interested in the game of golf; however, the chief enthusiast of the group was Marion R. Gray, another local businessman who ultimately became Wilshire's first president. Other prime movers of this group of men were C. E. Toberman, a real estate developer who had already acquired some of the Hancock land in the neighborhood, and Thomas C. Bundy, an ardent sportsman and businessman who served as the first secretary and whose office was used by the Club organizers until the Clubhouse was built.