Crag Burn Golf Club

Overview: Crag Burn Golf Club is a private Robert Trent Jones Sr. course in East Aurora, outside Buffalo, where a former estate, polo fields and wooded western New York ground became an 18-hole layout. The course is listed at about 7,100 yards and par 72 from its longest tees. Its mixed character comes from the changing landscape: open landing areas and broader views give way to tree-lined corridors, shaped ground and strategic bunkering. The old estate setting remains visible in the property’s scale, while the course asks for accurate placement and thoughtful approaches rather than simple distance.

History: Frank H. Goodyear Jr. and Dorothy Knox created the Crag Burn estate in the late 1920s, with stables, polo fields and extensive grounds. By the late 1960s the polo fields were no longer in use, and the family’s next generation proposed turning a 190-acre parcel into a golf course. Robert Trent Jones Sr. designed the course that opened in 1972. The club’s history preserves that connection between the former equestrian landscape and the present golf routing, including the continued use of existing estate structures.

Did You Know? Crag Burn’s clubhouse is housed in a former stable associated with the original estate. That detail gives the course an unusually direct link to its pre-golf life: the same property that once organized polo, horses and bridle paths now frames a Jones-designed routing. The transition was not a complete change of scenery, but a new use for a landscape that had already been shaped for movement and open views.