The '''Myopia Club''', regarded by some historians<ref name="Mayo">Mayo, p. 63. Others regard The Country Club in Brookline, Massachusetts as being the oldest, even though it was incorporated three years later. (It depends on one's definition of "country club".)</ref> as being the oldest country club, was founded in the 1870s by four brothers with poor vision: Gordon, Charles, Morton, and Frederick Prince.<ref name="Moss15">Moss, p. 15.</ref> At first it was a neighborhood boys club devoted to boating and tennis, based on the shores of Wedge Pond in Winchester, Massachusetts.<ref name="Mayo"/> Later the members' interests turned to riding and foxhunting, and the club moved to another site in Winchester, on Mystic Lake, where it became formally incorporated in 1879.<ref name="Moss15"/>
Several Myopia Club members were interested in moving the club closer to Boston, and this led to the founding of The Country Club in Brookline, Massachusetts in 1882.<ref name="Moss16">Moss, p. 16.</ref> But fox hunting proved impossible in Brookline, so those most interested in this activity founded the Myopia Hunt Club in Hamilton, Massachusetts.<ref name="Moss16"/>
The Mystic Lake site became known as "Myopia Hill". The Winchester Country Club was founded there in 1902, and it still occupies the site.[https://web.archive.org/web/20090531123548/http://www.winchestercc.org/club/scripts/public/public.asp]
== Notes == {{Reflist|2}}
== References == * James M. Mayo, ''The American country club: its origins and development'', Rutgers University Press, 1998. * Richard J. Moss, ''Golf and the American country club'', University of Illinois Press, 2001.
Category:Winchester, Massachusetts