Category Pioneer Pass

Pioneer Pass Golf Challenge which started as a way to get people interested in funding a road from Big Bear Lake to Pioneertown.

Oct. 26, 1974 featured image

Tee-Whiz!––27 miles of golf course

Sixty-six players (54 men and 12 women), plus an entourage of close to 300 spotters, judges (scorers and rules committee). Sponsors, vehicle drivers, and disbelieving friends, completed in this year's event recently–to the astonishment of deer hunters, motorcycle riders, and forest rangers who also frequent that neck of the woods.
Rocks and snakes featured image

Rocks, Snakes in Golf Challenge

In the early days of the Pioneer Pass Challenge, players walked or rode horseback the entire 27 miles, but today there us transportation from hole to hole by truck. The "cup" on the 10 Pioneer Pass holes is a 20-foot circle, but to reach it players must shoot over and around sagebrush, Joshua trees, rocks and even a snake or two. Play runs past Rimrock, through Pioneertown and the Russ Hayden Western Museum en route to the final hole at the Blue Shies course.
road game featured image

Golf challenge began as desert road game

The dirt back road between the towns is still unpaved, but the Pioneer Pass Golf Challenge has soldiered on, unfazed, for 56 years. Proceeds from the tournament, sponsored by the Rotary Club of Yucca Valley, goes to the Morongo Basin Historical Society and Miracle League of Morongo Basin, a baseball field and league for kids with special needs.