Fairchild Wheeler Golf Course - Black Course

D. Fairchild Wheeler Golf Course, often called Wheeler Park, occupies a rocky 400-acre tract in Fairfield but is owned by the City of Bridgeport. Bridgeport mayor Edward T. Buckingham championed the project during the Great Depression, and hundreds of unemployed men cleared the land in the early 1930s under federal relief programs; National Archives records show FERA starting the work and the WPA completing two 18-hole courses between 1933 and 1940. Both eighteens were designed by Robert W. White, a St Andrews native who was the first president of the PGA of America and a charter member of the American Society of Golf Course Architects. The Black Course came first and is dated to 1932, with the Red following as a WPA project around 1934. Wheeler hosted the New England Public Links in 1932. The par-71 Black measures about 6,560 yards from the back tees, and its fairway and greenside bunkers have been rebuilt in recent years.