First four decades Two plane crashes occurred on Langston Golf Course in the 1940s. On December 28, 1945, a single-engine civilian light plan landed without incident on the course after weather forced the pilot down. Another light plane, this one with engine problems, was forced to land on the course in 1948. The Leoffler company's management of the course came under scrutiny in the late 1940s. Golfers complained about the course so vehemently that
U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Public Lands began an investigation and asked the Park Service to delay renewing the firm's contract. A consultant strongly criticized the firm's stewardship of the course. In the summer of 1951, Leoffler won special permission from the
Office of Price Stabilization (a federal agency created to control prices during the
Korean War) to raise fees at the course. The company signed a 10-year contract to manage the course in 1954. In 1957, the course suffered a setback when its one-story,
concrete storage building burned to the ground, destroying $3,000 ($23,275 in 2010 inflated-adjusted dollars) worth of maintenance equipment. The
National Capital Planning Commission proposed filling in of Kingman Lake (about 50 to 60 percent of the lake's total area) in 1961 to make two small unnamed islands in the lake part of the mainland, which would add an additional to Langston Golf Course. This plan was never acted on. In 1963, Leoffler reported that Langston Golf Course had been turning a profit under his management, even though the company had spent tens of thousands of dollars to have the greens refurbished and a
miniature golf course added. Later that year, the NPS put a fence around Langston Golf Course to prevent golfers from accessing the course without paying fees and to prevent school children (some of whom had been hit by golf balls) from crossing the course during play. The course was closed for 24 hours on November 25, 1963, the day President
John F. Kennedy was buried. Langston was twice threatened with destruction in the 1960s. In 1964, Washington, D.C., officials proposed closing the first nine holes of Langston Golf Course and building the
Barney Circle Freeway on the land, but the
National Park Service (which owned and managed the island at the time) refused to turn over the land to the city. In 1969, the city of Washington proposed closing all of Langston Golf Course and building extensive low-income public housing on the golf course and the rest of Kingman Island. The National Park Service rejected that plan as well. Perhaps the biggest threat to the course was a study by the Park Service in the mid-1960s which called for a new federally owned golf course to be built at
Oxon Cove Park and Oxon Hill Farm (just over the District line in
Maryland). (At the time, it was estimated about 125 to 200 golfers used the course each day.)
Elder years From 1978 to 1981, African American golfer
Lee Elder managed Langston Golf Course. Elder had taught golf at Langston from 1960 to 1962. He met his future wife, Rose Harper, on the course. In 1970, Elder began seeking the National Park Service concession to manage Langston. He did not get the contract, but sought it again in 1972. In November 1975, Elder once more sought to manage Langston Golf Course. The National Park Service began looking for a new concessionaire to take over the park in September 1977. Elder won the concession in August 1978. He immediately spent $100,000 refurbishing the course. In April 1982, Lee Elder Enterprises said it owed $200,000 to creditors and was unable to pay. The D.C. court overseeing the company's financial problems said kitchen, maintenance, and
sports equipment would be auctioned off to help pay the debts. But the Park Service was also seriously considering closing the course for good. The Barney Circle Freeway would at last be built (they claimed) to bring the
Southeast Freeway north along the west bank of the Anacostia River, through Anacostia Park and Langston Golf Course, and then travel over the new bridge to connect with the
Anacostia Freeway. But widespread protests from wealthy
Capitol Hill residents, numerous lawsuits, and design changes caused the freeway's cost to balloon to $160 million, and it remained unbuilt by 1992. The
D.C. City Council had the final say on whether to proceed with the project or not. In December 1994, the City Council bowed to neighborhood opposition and voted overwhelmingly to cancel the Barney Circle Freeway.
Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium parking lot issue . On the island to the right of the bridge are the first nine holes of Langston Golf Course (just off-screen). In April 1983, the National Park Service chose a new company, Golf Course Specialists, to manage Langston Golf Course. The rough was groomed, greens
resodded, security patrols increased to reduce daylight and after-hours crime, and a community outreach program implemented. A far more serious threat came from
football. In 1987, the District of Columbia began looking for a way to upgrade or replace
Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium so that the
Washington Redskins would continue to play their games inside the city limits. In the summer of 1986,
D.C. Mayor Marion Barry and Redskins owner
Jack Kent Cooke agreed to dismantle Langston Golf Course and use the site for parking for a new stadium. But after protests from golfers and local residents (who did not want large amounts of traffic flowing through their neighborhood), Barry ruled out using Langston in the summer of 1987. Hodel agreed to do so. Barry even hired Lee Elder to begin designing a new course. But
William Penn Mott Jr., NPS Director, said that the Park Service was strongly opposed to the use of any Anacostia Park or Langston Golf Course land for parking. Four years drifted by, and still stadium talks were ongoing. Marion Barry declined to run for re-election in 1990 after being videotaped smoking
crack cocaine in a D.C. hotel. As the District still struggled to craft a deal to build a new stadium, the new Secretary of the Interior,
Manuel Lujan, Jr., forced the city's new mayor,
Sharon Pratt Dixon, to agree to preserve Langston Golf Course (although Lujan did agree to allow a redesign of the facility to accommodate some stadium parking). In January 1992, Mayor Dixon announced that golfers
Arnold Palmer and
Gary Player and businesswoman Rose Elder would design a new Langston Golf Course if the existing grounds were used for football stadium parking. By March 1992, Mayor Dixon was still proposing that parking be built on Langston Golf Course. As the stadium talks continued, a controversy over the concessions contract at Langston erupted. Former D.C. Council chairman
Arrington Dixon (and husband of Mayor Dixon) protested that the National Park Service—which was on the verge of signing a new, 15-year contract with Golf Course Specialists, Inc.—should suspend any contract negotiations until such time as the stadium issue was resolved, and that only minority-owned firms should be considered to manage the course. The new contract would commit Golf Course Specialists to pay $1.5 million to make a large number of improvements to the course, including a new clubhouse to replace the existing dilapidated structure (which had recently been closed due to health concerns). It also boosted the Park Service's share of net revenues from 2 percent to 20 percent. When no deal was forthcoming by April 3, Lujan moved ahead with the new contract and the golf course's renovations, which included the major clubhouse renovation. The District's insistence that parking be built on Langston Golf Course, however, helped clinch a stadium agreement: On December 7, 1992, Redskins owner Jack Kent Cooke agreed to build his team's new stadium next to RFK Stadium. But rising Congressional opposition to the stadium deal (primarily due to the impact it would have on local residents and its high costs) imperiled the stadium deal. Congressional opposition rose significantly after the stadium's chief proponent, D.C. City Council Chairman
John A. Wilson, committed suicide on May 19, 1993. By December, Redskins owner
Jack Kent Cooke abandoned the D.C. site and pledged to build his stadium in Maryland.
FedExField opened in
Landover, Maryland, in August 1997.
Golf Course Specialists years , one of the non-native non-migratory species which threatens Langston Golf Course and the surrounding ecosystem. With the stadium threat to Langston Golf Course gone, a number of improvements went ahead. In 1988, the Nation's Capital Bicentennial Celebration committee said it would spearhead a $15 million fund-raising project to build a family golf center at Langston. An $8 million project to regrade the course to improve drainage began. In 2002, a print of a painting by noted local artist Linwood Barnes depicting Clyde Martin taking the first drive at Langston Golf Course was hung in the clubhouse. In 2002 and 2003, Langston Golf Course opened a
putt-and-chip practice area for young golfers and a four-hole course for novices. A long-term lease, Norton said, would allow the lessee to obtain high levels of capital investment funds and greatly improve the courses. One of Langston's most difficult challenges is dealing with the
giant Canada geese (
Branta canadensis maxima) which inhabit the tidal marshes of Kingman Lake and the Anacostia River. Hundreds of the birds inhabit the marshes. The birds not only feed voraciously on the course's grasses, but their feces harm the greens and pose a health hazard to golfers. In 2007, federal park officials began considering a program to cull the geese population around Langston Golf Course in an attempt to save the river, an effort opposed by some animal rights groups. Despite the historic nature of the course and the many improvements to it in the past decades, Langston Golf Course has never hosted a PGA event or
U.S. Open tournament.
National Links Trust In 2020, the
National Park Service signed an agreement with National Links Trust to operate the course along with the two other courses located in DC. At the end of 2025, the
Trump administration prematurely terminated the lease agreement for this course and for the other two courses managed by the National Links Trust. ==Footnotes==