Vandals Bogey All 18 At Esmeralda Weekend Snowmobilers Leave Ruts In Golf Course’s Greens

Its precious turf is gouged and burnt - testimony to Esmeralda Golf Course’s painful weekend.

Snowmobilers provided the finishing touches Sunday night, leaving deep ruts in their wake.

“The green is the most sacred from a golfer’s point of view,” said Mike Stone, co-director of the city parks department.

Stone said the snowmobiling vandals “drove through the fence on all 18 greens.”

Esmeralda’s travails began late Thursday or early Friday morning when a truck slid off a service road on the east end of Minnehaha Park.

The truck went over an embankment, slid down a hill and wedged itself against a tree near the golf course parking lot.

On Saturday night, “someone came by with a four-wheel drive” and tried to remove the truck, Stone said.

“They drove around, spun around and tore up turf.”

The truck stayed put.

Sometime Saturday or Sunday, someone pulled up stakes used to hold the orange-plastic snow fence that protects the greens. The stakes were used to build a bonfire.

“It burned a 3-foot-diameter hole in the No. 17 green,” Stone said.

Sunday night, two or three people took a snowmobile ride across Esmeralda, tearing down what was left of the fencing.

A neighbor called police, and maintenance workers at the course tried unsuccessfully to catch the offenders.

They wound up with the snowmobile, which stalled in the chase.

The truck and the snowmobile have been impounded, Stone said. Spokane police are tracing vehicle registrations.”So we got a truck and a snowmobile out of the deal?” joked Councilman Chris Anderson during Monday’s council briefing.

The dollar amount of the damage won’t be known until spring, when the grass either grows - or doesn’t grow - back, Stone said.

, DataTimes