Old Works Golf Course

Old Works, Montana's only Jack Nicklaus Signature course open to the public, built on what had been Anaconda's first copper smelter site and a federal Superfund cleanup site declared in 1983. The community and Arco partnered in the late 1980s on the idea of reviving the poisoned land with a world-class golf course. What opened in 1997 is singular. The defining feature is the black slag, the copper-smelting byproduct that shows up throughout the routing as the course's bunker sand. Mr. Nicklaus liked one hole enough to replicate it at Bear's Best in Las Vegas, and had black sand imported from Anaconda to make it authentic. 'Flue #5', the 195-yard par-3 4th, is the signature; the par-3 7th (238 yards, green as an island in black sand, significantly downhill into prevailing wind) is often called the best par-3 on the course. 7,705 yards par 72. Golf Digest Top 100. One of the most unusual Nicklaus public courses in America and the kind of round that carries a story home, a Superfund site reclaimed as a world-class public layout.