Western Wonders
California’s Martis Camp and Idaho’s Huntsman Springs are a pair of impressive new communities with natural settings
BY CHRIS DUTHIE
MARTIS CAMP Truckee, California
It’s astonishing, really, to experience the High Sierra in California’s Lake Tahoe area. Blanketed in towering Jeffery pines and bound by snow-laden escarpments, the region has long been a haven to anyone drawn to the great outdoors.
Martis Camp’s course marks Tom Fazio’s return to the Lake Tahoe area after 40 years.
Such is the idyllic setting of Martis Camp, a 2,177-acre property located midway between Truckee, California, and North Lake Tahoe that is being co-developed by award-winning DMB Associates. It is, as residents are discovering, a nonpareil symbiosis of privacy, space, exclusivity, and recreation.
Anchoring Martis Camp’s good-life mantra is a just-opened Tom Fazio-designed private course that marks the esteemed architect’s return to the Lake Tahoe area after a 40-year absence. (In 1968 a young Tom and his uncle, George Fazio, co-crafted Edgewood Tahoe Golf Club, a venue that still ranks among the area’s better tests.)
“I wouldn’t be surprised if some people say it’s as good as any course I have ever designed,” says Tom about the Martis Camp routing, a 7,707-yard, environmentally sensitive layout that highlights and underscores the very best characteristics of high-altitude golf. “It has dramatic elevation changes, thick pine forests, and the
panoramic backdrops of Mount Rose and the Carsons. Yet the wide fairways, generous greens, and immaculate conditions make the course a highly enjoyable experience for the members.”
Adding to the golf amenities is a new 18-hole putting course, plus a planned 50,000-square-foot lodge with fine dining, fitness center, and a spa (scheduled to open in summer 2010) that’s sited off the 18th green. Also planned: 20 miles of hiking trails, tennis, a three-acre fishing lake, and an 18,000-square-foot Family Barn that will feature bocce, swimming, bowling, indoor basketball, a movie theater, and an outdoor concert pavilion (scheduled for summer 2009).
Furthering the community’s four-season allure is a private high-speed quad lift that, in winter 2008-9, will link residents and guests with Northstar-at-Tahoe Resort’s ski slopes and services. It’s not your typical amenity, to be sure, but then Martis Camp isn’t a typical community.
Single-family homesites are priced from $500,000 for .4-acre lots to $625,000 for lots that average two acres. Full golf memberships are $105,000 and capped at 375, while limited-access golf privileges are included with every homesite purchase.
HUNTSMAN SPRINGS Driggs, Idaho
Few people require a compelling reason to live in Idaho—the state is blessed with eye-candy landscapes, clean air and water, and a bounty of world-class outdoor recreation. So when the news arrived that a David
McLay Kidd golf course would soon anchor a new high-end golf community within sight of the Teton Mountains, a modern-day land rush was bound to follow.
Kidd’s handiwork is deserving of such unabashed attention. The well-regarded Scotsman crafted the original Bandon Dunes layout in Oregon—ranked among America’s best—and is fresh from orchestrating the just-opened Castle Course in St. Andrews, Scotland. So, anticipation is justifiably high for Huntsman Springs’ 7,411-yard inland links-style layout, to be completed late next year.
“I was offered this Teton Valley property that not only has breathtaking mountain backdrops but also a remarkable expanse of natural wetlands,” says Kidd, referring to the on-site, 500-acre wildlife refuge that was reclaimed and expanded following a century of flood irrigation and cattle ranching. “The golf course plays in and around the wetland fingers, leaving the golfer with a completely natural playing experience.”
Visually stunning, the mountains-and-water canvas is further enhanced by Canada geese, Sandhill cranes, Trumpeter swans, curlews, owls, and falcons that nest within the protected marshland. Additionally, residents and guests of this 1,350-acre development can access the expanse via walking
trails and a two-mile elevated boardwalk.
Other planned amenities include generously sized parks for basketball, tennis, picnicking, and field sports; stocked fly-fishing ponds; outfitting services for off-site horseback riding, skiing and fishing; a town plaza with restaurants and boutique shopping; and a 45,000-square-foot clubhouse with fine dining, fitness center, wellness spa, swimming pool, and boardrooms (scheduled to open in fall 2010).
Huntsman Springs offers three enticing real estate products: Half-acre, single family homesites are priced from $300,000; pre-built Park Homes are 2,400 square feet, fully furnished and landscaped and start at $1 million; and pre-built Mountain View Lodges—also fully furnished and landscaped—range up to 6,000 square feet and start at $2 million. (Full membership privileges to the private golf club may or may not be included with property purchase).
Located in Driggs, Huntsman Springs is 15 minutes from Grand Targhee Ski Resort, 45 minutes from Jackson Hole and Grand Teton National Park, and 93 miles from the west entrance of Yellowstone National Park.
Chris Duthie is a Durango, Colorado-based writer
