History
In 1959 the San Francisco Giants' owner Horace Stoneham developed the property as a spring training camp for his popular Major League Baseball team. The name of the property was taken from the San "Francisco" Giants and Casa "Grande".
During its early years, the hotel was popular with celebrities like John Wayne and Pat Boone. Guests are able to stay in their eponymously-titled suites.
After the Giants were moved to Scottsdale, the California Angels used the facility from 1982 until 1984. The next two years saw the transformation of the baseball fields into football fields, which were used as the training camp headquarters for the USFL's Arizona Wranglers and the Denver Gold.
From 1984 to 2002, the Francisco Grande operated as a destination golf resort. The course was 5,224 yards from the front tees and a long 7,545 yards from the championship tees.
In 2003, the resort was closed for renovations which cost approximately $8.5 million dollars. It reopened in 2005.
Read more about this topic: Francisco Grande
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“All things are moral. That soul, which within us is a sentiment, outside of us is a law. We feel its inspiration; out there in history we can see its fatal strength.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The thing that struck me forcefully was the feeling of great age about the place. Standing on that old parade ground, which is now a cricket field, I could feel the dead generations crowding me. Here was the oldest settlement of freedmen in the Western world, no doubt. Men who had thrown off the bands of slavery by their own courage and ingenuity. The courage and daring of the Maroons strike like a purple beam across the history of Jamaica.”
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—Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (1870–1924)