Black Butte Ranch - Big Meadow Golf Course

Black Butte Ranch sits in Central Oregon beneath the Cascade Range, with mountain views and the volcanic cone of Black Butte, formed roughly a million and a half years ago, giving the resort its name. Springs run through the property, the largest of them Paulina Springs, fed by meltwater that travels through passages in the volcanic rock.

The ground beneath the Big Meadow course has changed form over the millennia, shifting from lake to marsh and finally to the dry meadow seen today. Paulina Springs served as a camp along an early migration route between the Great Basin and the Oregon Coast, a use supported by Native American oral history and by a cache of bi-faced tools found nearby and dated to about a thousand years ago. An 1878 alternate route of the Santiam Wagon Road crossed the property; marked posts identify two surviving traces, one beside Lupine Lake and one near Glaze Meadow.