Taylor Mustang Creek Country Club

Taylor Mustang Creek Country Club

By Susan Komandosky and Suzanne Haberman Friday, 14 August 2009

The Taylor Country Club, which sits high atop Washington Heights on the south side of Taylor, had a long and colorful history, from its founding in 1924 to the sale of the club in 2006. At the time of the sale, the Taylor Country Club was one of the oldest continuously operating country clubs in the state of Texas. The building and grounds are still maintained as a country club but under a new charter as the Taylor Mustang Creek Country Club.

An article in a 1926 Sunday Austin American-Statesman described the club as having a $10,000 valuation . . . “On the first floor one finds large spacious parlors, the grill, kitchen and men’s locker rooms. The entire upper floor is one large ballroom with a clear maple floor.”

Through the years “the club,” as most of the members refer to it, has hosted at least one governor, several senators and congressmen and numerous local public officials. Gov. Dan Moody, a Taylor native, held his unofficial inaugural dinner at the club following his official dinner in Austin, said Tim Mikeska, whose grandparents were the cooks and managers of the club for many years.

The club had a nine-hole golf course as well as an unusually large swimming pool. The pool was built by R.H. Eckhardt in about 1915, and the club was built adjacent to the pool.

The course originally had greens of oiled sand, according to Ruth Mantor in her book “Our Town Taylor.” Mantor said the oiled sand “tempted duffers to line up a putt by gently dragging the putter from the ball to the cup.” Conventional greens replaced the oiled sand after water lines were laid into that part of town.

Being the only place anyone could buy a mixed drink was one of the main attractions enticing people to join the club in the early days. Members brought in their own bottles of liquor, and they were kept in a special locker exclusively for them, longtime member John Wehby said. In the 1960s the club got a liquor license and began stocking a full bar.

Another attraction was the slot machines, which disappeared from the club in the 1950s after a grand jury instructed the sheriff to seize them. The sheriff called some friends in Taylor and told them that he was being sent over to seize the machines. He said he would probably be there in a couple of hours (despite the close proximity of the county seat in Georgetown to Taylor). In the time it took the sheriff and his deputies to arrive, all of the slot machines disappeared. One machine was found in the back of the city maintenance building some years ago. The club’s president, Ed Komandosky, owns the machine, which is no longer operational.

In addition to the slots, there was a poker club that met in the basement. No one remembers when the group started, but it was disbanded in the 1980s after law enforcement officials raided it.

In the late 1970s and early ’80s, a renovation project costing nearly $350,000 forced the club to sell the golf course to a group of investors in 1986. The $100,000 from the sale helped pay down the debt.

In 2006 a group of 24 investors headed by Paul Pokorny organized and bought the club. They rechartered it as the Taylor Mustang Creek Country Club, remodeled it and are conducting a membership drive. For now the club is open for bimonthly membership dinners and rented out for special events.

Pokorny said they hope to operate a restaurant and restore the upstairs ballroom. He said he would also like to have a full bar and hire a pianist to play on a regular basis.