The year was 1947. World War II had ended two years before Navy veteran Earl Lees and his three brothers, Samuel, Merle and William, bought 75 acres in what was then Franklin Township.

Their tract was part of a 210-acre farm owned by a West View physician, Dr. Clarence Cummings. The farm also included land along West Ingomar Road, where the Unitarian Universalist Church of the North Hills was later built.

"We got 75 acres for $7,500," Earl Lees recalled. "And we could have bought the entire tract, including three houses and three beautiful barns, for the same price per acre. But $21,000 seemed like a million dollars then."

For the next decade, Merle and Samuel Lees worked full time for U.S. Steel, while their two brothers farmed the land, raising chickens and beef cattle. Samuel Lees had dropped out of the partnership by 1960, when the brothers began to construct a nine-hole golf course. By the time Franklin Park Golf Course opened in 1964, the community had changed from a township to a borough. For the next 40 years, the course on Morrow Lane provided exercise and amusement for three generations of hackers.

"Some of those guys have been golfing here for the entire history of the course," Earl Lees said Tuesday, the last day the course was open. "Some are a lot sadder than me."

Eddy Homes, a Peters-based developer, plans to build single-family homes where bluegrass fairways and bent grass greens now stand. The neighborhood will be called Scarlet Ridge.

"We didn't have any plans to put in a golf course when we bought the land," Lees recalled. "We bought it for farming." By 1960, the brothers had acquired a second poultry farm nearby and had given up raising beef.

"Since we were out of the beef business, we no longer needed all that land in Franklin Park," Lees said. "Merle and I were the golfers, and he and I designed the course. Bill was the agronomist, and he was well studied with Penn State in how to grow farm crops and grasses."

Penn State's Jack Harper advised the brothers on constructing greens, while landscaper Craig Oliver helped them with grading and plant selection.

The brothers' overlapping careers in agricultural and outdoor recreation paralleled a period of change that transformed Pittsburgh's northern suburbs and southern Butler County. Population growth, which began after World War II, took off following the completion of highways such as Interstates 79 and 279.

But even before the interstates were built, homes began to spring up around the course, Lees said. Some residents started to complain about errant golf balls and trespassing players.

"The neighbors thought it was great to live near a course until they found out some golfers didn't hit the balls where they aimed them," Lees said.

William Lees died in 1974, and Merle and Earl Lees sold the golf course to Eddy Land Co. in 1977.

The developer had no immediate plans to build on the site, and the brothers continued to operate the golf course under a series of two-year leases. They also made some changes in the hole layout that lessened neighbors' protests.

For the past two years, Earl Lees' daughter, Amanda Griffith, a turf major at Penn State, held the lease for the course.

In 1968, the brothers and their families bought land near Harrisville in Mercer Township, Butler County. In 1989, they started construction on Valley View Golf Course, a nine-hole course that opened in 1992. Lees' wife, Donna, runs the club house there, while Griffith handles the books.

For many years, the brothers also raised field crops, hay, beef cattle and horses on an adjoining farm, but those efforts have been cut back over the years. Merle Lees died in 1999.

The success of the Settlers Walk neighborhood near the Franklin Park course was a sign to Earl Lees that the end was near for that course.

Last year, developer Ed Moritz, of Eddy Land Co., advised the Lees that 2004 would be its last season.

Plans for Scarlet Ridge, approved by Franklin Park's planners and council, show a neighborhood of 62 single-family homes. A portion of the golf course site was transferred to Franklin Park Properties, developer of Settlers Walk, for the fifth phase of that subdivision.

Donna Lees said she won't miss the 100-mile round-trip journeys her husband made from their home in Mercer Township to oversee the Franklin Park course.

Earl Lees had strong praise for the employees at the Franklin Park course, especially Kathy Cress, who managed the course for 27 years. "It was a tearful day," he said of the closing.

Lees, 77, has no plans to take it easy.

"I'll just be able to spend more time making [Valley View] run up here," he said. "I have lots of good memories."

He noted at least one disadvantage to operating a golf course. "After we built the first course, both Merle and I played a lot less golf. You can never enjoy playing on your own course. You're always looking at ball marks and at things that need to be done," he said.

"It was never the greatest course," Lees acknowledged. "But a lot of people have had a lot of fun here."

First Published: September 5, 2004, 4:00 a.m.