Historic West Park, home of the first and still in use disc golf course in Illinois.
Description
West Park is the oldest and still playable course in Illinois.
For many years there were pockets of people all over the globe creating games with frisbees as instructed on the embossed toys themselves. One of these people happed to be Paul McCallister. Paul had been home from college one summer and decided to make an object golf course at West Park using masking tape on trees and other objects, the basic concept of the sport. The sport as the Joliet area new it was born.
The original course was designed by local disc golf legend, Paul McCallister. Paul worked with the Joliet Park District to get a course installed. The Joliet Park District reached out to DGA (Ed Headrick) when looking for equipment for the course and realized that the purchase of baskets also included professional design and certification for tournament play. The Park District Board members wanted to see the certification come from DGA.
After the purchase of baskets the Joliet Park District and Paul McCallister went to work. Ed Headrick (the Godfather of disc golf and designer of the disc golf basket) called Paul and asked him to pick him up at O’Hare airport and take him to West Park to go over his design. He did so in early April, 1979 and walked the design with him. Ed seemed pleased with Paul's design and use of the land and offered suggestions for slight changes in placement for baskets 6 and 14 and.
West Park became reality and opened in early October, 1979.
West Park has gone through many redesigns over the years and in 2018 landed on its latest iteration designed by Gary Lewis with input from other local disc golfers.
Whether this is your first time at West Park or you have been there since the early days it should be known that this is holy ground and the epicenter that started disc golf in Northern Illinois.