Bethlehem's
Golfing Culture
The elite Bethlehem Steel leaders
also generated a unique golfing culture that created 60 holes of golf in
only thirty years. In the 1940’s, Steel top executives gave money
for the improvement of the Saucan Valley Country Club and its 18 hole championship
golf course. Soon the country club had one of the nicest club houses
in the state, and secluded villas for steel executives to reserve for private
drinking and dancing. (19) In the late 1940’s, the Steel
funded yet another 18 hole golf course. This was "The Bethlehem Steel
Club", which was meant as an incentive to prevent plant supervisors from
unionizing. Once upper and middle management had their own golf courses,
complaints were sure to come from labor. They arrived in the 1950’s,
so Bethlehem Steel donated money to the city to build an 18 hole public
golf course. By the 1960’s, Saucon Valley country club was becoming more
crowded as middle management sought to join the elite. This created
trouble when it caused important guests to have to wait to tee off.
The result was the Steel-owned, ultra-exclusive Weyhill Golf Club.
Membership was so limited that executives’ wives weren’t allowed to
play until the late 1970's, and even then, women were only allowed for Sunday
afternoon play. Weyhill’s 18 holes brought the Bethlehem total to
60, including Saucon’s 6 practice holes. (31-3) Certainly
this excess of company funded recreation shows much of the lifestyle that
Steel executives enjoyed.
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