The time is right for 72-year-old Hidden Hills Golf Club managing owner Mickey Pierce. He suffered a stroke two years ago and he and wife Elizabeth are ready to retire.

At 2 p.m. on July 23, the course on County Road 16, Woodville, built by Pierce’s parents and family-owned for 44 years, will be auctioned.

The Pierce family has owned the property for over a century. In 1966, Mickey’s parents, the late Oral Dewell Pierce and Edith Elizabeth Pierce, who turned 92 in May, decided to convert the tomato farm into a golf course.

Family Ownership ending After 44 years of ownership, Mickey Pierce, left, and his brother David are auctioning off Hidden Hills Golf Course. (Press photo by Ken Grosjean)

Co-owner David Pierce, Mickey’s brother, says his father had a chance to meet farm labor organizer Cesar Chavez, and it was after that meeting that Oral Pierce decided to no longer raise tomatoes.

“Back in the 60s, they used to have a farm program that paid you not to grow crops,” Mickey said. “Even if your farmland was doing nothing, you had to maintain it, and we maintained it. When it was mowed, it looked like a big, grass field.

“My dad, when he was a railroader said some of these railroad people would come out and hit golf balls in the grass. They kept telling my dad he should have a golf course, and that’s how the idea came about.

“We got some estimates on doing all the construction work, and at first that was too much, and my dad could not see how we could do that. He’d go broke and he’d lose his farm and everything else. But we finally got over that hurdle.”

Mickey and David were young adults when the course was built. As youth, they played in the same creek that now runs through the golf course, just like their father did.

“David and I were instrumental in building the golf course,” Mickey said. “David used to work every day and he watered at night when we put the irrigation system in. We’d use his tractor and we’d plant grass and we built the greens. We got that done pretty fast.”

Construction by the Woodville-based Graffice Construction Company carried on until 1967 and in 1968 the course opened. The back nine was added years later. Oral was in charge of the design, but his wife, Elizabeth, played a major role.

“Mom put in the heart-shaped green,” Mickey said. “She said we had to be the golf course with the heart.”

Mickey has been managing the course, along with other businesses, for 24 years. David now resides in Danville, Indiana where he builds and repairs veterinary equipment with his youngest son.

“Over the past few years I’ve pretty much left it up to Mickey to manage the golf course and everything,” David said. “I think he’s done well. He’s taken some pretty rough hits with the weather and had a problem with getting open in the spring and so forth. This year was a real challenge because two months of just continuous rain.”

Mickey adds, “It’s been a plus and a minus. It’s been a typical family business. It’s been a plus because we have the golf course and everything, minus because it was a new overwhelming responsibility in our family life.”

Oral Pierce passed away at age 68 in 1987 while Mickey’s mother resides in a Woodville condominium. Mickey and his wife previously lived on Fremont Pike between Woodville and Fremont, but are now residing at the golf course until the property is sold.

“If I had to write a purchase order for mother and dad, I wouldn’t change a thing. They were very instrumental in their kids’ life. They were the most instrumental of anybody else,” Mickey said.

The 5,687 yard par 72 golf course and its clubhouse are laid out over 98-plus acres. The fairways are blue grass and greens are bent grass.

It is to be offered at auction in three separate parcels or as one. The first parcel is 56-plus acres; the second is 40.8-plus acres with two outbuildings; and the third is the house and two-plus acres. There may be a separate auction on August 20 for content and equipment.

The minimum bid is $550,000, but Mickey says he would like it to bring at least $1.2 million. In addition, he hopes the entire property stays together as a golf course.

“Who knows what it will bring? We are in a down market and we understand that,” Mickey said. “Economic-wise, this probably isn’t the best time to get out, but health-wise, time-wise, year-wise, this is it. We are ready to retire.

“The real estate agent told me there are some people who might be interested in some of this land to make an equine facility, and I have no control over that,” Mickey continued.

“On the 23rd we’ll know if it is going to be a golf course of what it is going to be. On the (August) 20th, we’ll sell the equipment unless it stays a golf course. If they do keep it a golf course, I hope they keep the name Hidden Hills because mother came up with that name. How she ever did it, I’ll never know. I never understood my mother when she came up with this stuff,” Mickey said.

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