Est. 1924 · B.F. Rowe (1924); revised by A.W. Tillinghast (1936)
Why we love this place
Muny means more to us than most courses ever could. This is where kids walked onto the first tee and, without a lawsuit or a headline, helped desegregate golf in the South. Every loop here is a reminder that a municipal course can change a city. We are rooting hard for its future.
Via The Cultural Landscape Foundation
About Lions Municipal Golf Course
Affectionately known as Muny, Lions Municipal opened in 1924 as Austin's first public golf course, laid out under Lions Club member B.F. Rowe, with A.W. Tillinghast reworking several holes in 1936. Its enduring fame is as a civil-rights landmark. In 1950, when two young African American players walked onto the course in quiet defiance of Jim Crow rules, city officials chose to let them play rather than remove them, making Muny one of the first public golf courses in the American South to desegregate, without a court order and without violence. That peaceful integration came years before Brown v. Board of Education. For its national significance, Lions Municipal was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2016, and community advocates continue working to protect the beloved 141-acre course.
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