[Reprinted from The Redmond Spokesman, Redmond, OR -- Wednesday, May 29, 2002]

By GARY G. NEWMAN, Spokesman staff writer

While Juniper Golf Club celebrates its 50th anniversary with a tournament Sunday, the club really started 62 years ago when a scratch golfer from Portland, who was sent to Redmond to manage the Western Auto Store, found out the nearest course was a rough nine-hole layout in Bend with equally rough hospitality.

Fred Sparks, with his appropriate last name, ignited interest in the course in 1940. According to a story by Mickey Myrick in the club's 25th anniversary program, Sparks alone put in 5,500 hours of physical labor over 12 years before the course was done.

He and a cohort of friends pulled stumps, moved rocks, and waited out shortages caused by the world war to bring golf to Redmond.

Sparks and his friends petitioned the city to build the course on unused city land that was part of what became Roberts Field.

Sparks and City Engineer John Berning spent three weeks with surveyor's equipment roughing out the course and planning the irrigation system. Among Sparks' helpers, Mac Houk, Ted Wells, Harold Hansen, Ray Rogers, all Redmond golfers, worked out the agreement with the city.

"There's still a sense of community on the golf course that's always been here," says Bruce Wattenburger, who has been the Juniper pro for the past 19 years. "It's kind of a blue collar retired person's, affordable greens fee, golf course that still has its down home mentality."

Sparks and his friends pulled hundreds of stumps and moved tons of rock, but the project halted in 1942 when the war effort froze the availability of steel for irrigation pipes and many other things. The project revived in 1946 but steel pipe was still unavailable. The final push came in 1949 after an editorial by Joe Brown in the Redmond Spokesman implying that no one in Redmond had the gumption to finish work on the golf course.

Sparks solicited 76 memberships to Juniper Golf Club, and persuaded half the members to loan the club $150 each as working capital, according to Myrick. He talked the Air Force out of three unused barracks, sawed them in half and moved them to the site of the club's present parking lot where they served as a pro shop and clubhouse for 10 years. Finally work was finished, pipe became available and grass was planted early in 1951.

Sparks stepped onto the first tee to drive the first ball on Memorial Day 1952. His dream of winning the club's first championship tournament died at the hands of Harold Hanson, a Bend club champion who edged him in the 1953 event. Who says the Bend-Redmond rivalry doesn't run deep?

Juniper has continued to grow. The present clubhouse and pro shop were added after a fire took the old buildings in 1963. They added a second nine in 1987.

Retired Redmond doctor Robert Unger remembers playing on sand greens before the lingering hardships of the war allowed for the irrigation pipe. The course was pretty simple at first.

"The old course, you just went up and back," he said. "They improved it 200 percent since then."

Wattenburger likens the Juniper Golf Course experience to a trek through the High Desert. The course is par 72. At just over 6,500 yards from the back tees, length is not an issue to the better players, Wattenburger said, but it's a challenge to hit the small greens.

"We have players who have been coming here for years," Wattenburger said. "It's challenging to them, especially the greens."

Not only has Juniper changed over the years, golfers have changed as well. The membership, which has grown to more than 430, has grown younger and more active year around. Where the parking lot may have had six cars on a winter day in the 1950s or 1960s, now it could have 60.

Wattenburger came to the club from Columbia Edgewater in Portland in 1983, where he worked for five years. He is current President of the Northwest section of the PGA, a position he also held in 1991 to 1995. He was a member of the PGA national board of directors from 1995-98 and also a past member of the PGA National Board of Control.

Wattenburger is especially proud of the club's youth program, which attracts 150 to 200 kids every summer. The club allows the Redmond High School golf team to play at the course free of charge.

"We're proud of the championship team we had last year," he said. "That is part of what we've done for the past 15 years in trying to keep kids in the game."

While Juniper has changed over the years for golfers, the world has changed for Juniper. The club will have to move to a new site south of the fairgrounds when its lease is up in 2006.

The Federal Aviation Administration has started enforcing fair market lease rates on its lands and the club's lease could soar from the dollar-a-year deal Sparks and his friends struck with the city to more than $100,000 a year. So the club will move in fact, but maybe not in spirit.

"I don't see the structure of the club changing in any great degree," said Wattenburger. "It's the same old club, we'll just be parking in a different parking lot."

Golfers will celebrate 50 years of community golfing in Redmond when they tee off Sunday in a members-only tournament. They'll also be celebrating the Sparks that kindled a passion for this sport in the juniper.