Elkhorn Ridge Golf Club

Overview: Elkhorn Ridge Golf Club is a public Patrick Wyss design in Spearfish, set across the historic Frawley Ranch in the Black Hills. The front nine follows rolling prairie and a high ridge with broad views across Centennial Valley, while the back nine turns into Polo Creek Canyon and uses the wooded, rocky ground more intimately. The 18-hole course reaches 7,200 yards at par 72, with elevation, exposed approaches and changing vegetation providing the main strategic variables. Its two-nines-in-one setting gives the round a clear sense of progression from open ranchland to canyon golf.

History: Elkhorn Ridge opened in 2009 on land connected to the Frawley Ranch, a historic property assembled by Henry Frawley in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The ranch covers roughly 4,750 acres and is listed as a National Historic Landmark, so the golf project was developed within a landscape with a documented ranching and settlement history. Patrick Wyss routed the course to respect the rolling prairie and wooded creek country, allowing the historic landform to remain the dominant feature rather than treating it as a theme.

Did You Know? The front and back nines are separated not only by scorecard order but by landscape. The first nine looks across Centennial Valley from the ridge, while the second winds through Polo Creek Canyon, giving Elkhorn Ridge two very different visual chapters in one round.