Club History

It might well have been called "San Luis Rey," this lovely, secluded dale in which the Pauma Valley Country Club is located, for it is nestled wholly within a valley of the San Luis Rey River. The mountains of the Cleveland National Forest rise to the north, while Mount Palomar, best known for the historic 200 inch mirror telescope at its crown of 6,126 feet, lies about four mile to the northeast.

The first residents of Pauma Valley were a small tribe of Indians, and the Paumas took their name from an Indian word which means "spring water". The tribes who lived in these valleys, most descended from Shoshonean stock, were gatherers and hunters. Nature's bounty, nourished by the lifeblood of the river, provided all they needed. The tribes along the river were industrious, the only Indians in California to make a cloth textile, and also produced exceptionally beautiful baskets, so closely woven they would hold water and perhaps the finest examples of that art in North America.

The arrival of the twentieth century brought many changes to Pauma Valley, one of the most significant of which was the building of the dam that created nearby Lake Henshaw. Although this completely cut off the surface flow of the San Luis Rey River through Pauma Valley and other valleys downstream of the dam, water continues its invisible flow deep underground, creating a lush and verdant landscape along the riverbed.

While the Homestead Act of 1862 offered many families an opportunity to acquire land in California, the early- to mid-1900s witnessed the arrival in Pauma Valley of new settlers and property developers who would gradually change the valley into the rich agricultural area that it is today. Those ranches in the area became part of the jigsaw of land parcels which would combine to form The Pauma Valley Country Club. These residents and visitors ranged from citrus farmers and cattle barons to Hollywood celebrities including, briefly, John Wayne. Only recently torn down, for many decades the "John Wayne Ranch House" stood next to the 14th tee.