- Rating
- 72
- Slope
- 141
- Par
- 72
- Yards
- 6,798
Fossil Trace Golf Club in Golden is the rare public course that is both a serious round and a one-of-a-kind setting. Built on the site of a former clay mine at the foot of the Front Range, the Jim Engh layout opened in 2003 and has stayed on short lists of Colorado’s best municipal golf ever since. Engh routed the holes through four different pieces of ground: wetlands, open prairie, old mine workings, and lowland ponds. Recessed fairways, kick slopes, and funneling greens hide the surrounding town and keep the ball in play. From the tips it stretches to about 6,800 yards, with multiple tee sets so a mixed group can play the same holes at different lengths. The back nine is the reason people book it. Holes 11 through 15 run beneath sandstone bluffs left by the mine, and the par-5 12th plays through fossil-bearing pillars that split the fairway and frame the green. Trace fossils of palm fronds and dinosaur footprints, including Triceratops tracks roughly 64 million years old, sit beside the hole and are explained in the clubhouse exhibit. About 20 minutes west of downtown Denver, it is an easy add for any group already in the metro area.