James Walker Tufts

James Walker Tufts was an American success: an entrepreneur, inventor, and philanthropist. He rose from being a sixteen year old drug store apprentice to becoming a wealthy businessman who had the vision and determination to build the village of Pinehurst, North Carolina in only six months. When he died in 1902 in a suite of the Carolina Hotel, his son, Leonard Tufts, said Pinehurst became not only the culmination of his father’s career, it was also the living monument to his life’s work.

James Walker Tufts was born in 1835, the son of a Charlestown, Massachusetts blacksmith. He was apprenticed to an apothecary shop when he was 15. At age 21, his apprenticeship complete, he established his own apothecary store, which he quickly expanded to five stores in Massachusetts. When he was 27, Tufts developed and began manufacturing and selling the successful Arctic Soda machines through his new venture, the Arctic Soda Fountain Company. And since parts of his popular fountains were silver plated, that led him to manufacture an extensive line of silver plated pitchers, dishes and table accessories. It was this innovative soda fountain business that created the wealth that made Pinehurst possible. Many of these items, including an Artic Soda machine, are on display at the Tufts Archives in Pinehurst. 

Tufts was interested in improving the working and living conditions of his workers and the less fortunate. He established one of the first mutual benefit associations for his employees for the payment of health benefits. During the 1880s, Tufts founded a plumbing and printing apprentice school and started a savings bank to protect the earnings of immigrant Italians in the North End of Boston. But it was his work with the Invalid Aid Society, organized to assist those of failing health that many say led to the development of Pinehurst.

The health of James Walker Tufts, according to his son, Leonard, had never been robust and it was necessary for him to take frequent vacations. Tufts began searching in the 1890s for an area with sunshine, fresh air and a healthy environment. By 1895, he found it in the Pine Barrens of the Sandhills of North Carolina. James Walker Tufts eventually purchased almost six thousand acres of rolling sandy hills made barren and treeless after years of harvesting the sap of pine trees for turpentine, pitch and tar. 

Tufts selected the name for his resort from a list of potential titles for a development for Martha’s Vineyard. One name struck his fancy and was not used in Massachusetts, so James Tufts received permission to call his new town, Pinehurst. Tufts hired the firm started by Frederick Law Olmsted, famous for creating New York City’s Central Park, to plan the new village. For a fee of $300, Olmsted’s firm designed an attractive and welcoming New England-style village with a village green and twisting, winding streets. They filled the area with lush plantings of pines, camellias, crepe myrtles and thousands of other species. Construction started in June and six months later, the Holly Inn welcomed twenty guests on December 31, 1895. By the end of 1896, there were cottages, boarding houses, a power plant and lines for a trolley.

James Tufts turned over the operation of his business interests to his son, Leonard, so he could supervise the development of Pinehurst. Leonard wrote that “it took 12 years of hard work to impress the public enough so that they came to the hotels in sufficient numbers to make a profit.”

Tufts first wanted Pinehurst to be a health resort for people of modest means, but the contagion of tuberculosis forced him to consider what one writer called “an absolutely new idea of outdoor sport.” And that sport included the game of golf. A resort employee complained to Tufts in 1897 that guests were hitting little white balls in the dairy fields around Pinehurst and bothering the cows. Tufts investigated and saw potential in the game of golf, which was then relatively new to America. He was advised by some that the game might be just a passing fancy, but Tufts commissioned a nine-hole golf course in 1897 that was later expanded to 18-holes. And it was in 1900 that James Walker Tufts met Donald Ross and hired him to rework and redesign the course in Pinehurst. The now-renowned Ross-designed Pinehurst Number Two course opened in 1901.

James Walker Tufts died in 1902 in Pinehurst. An obituary in a Massachusetts newspaper said his was “a well spent life.” Tufts, the newspaper wrote, “never missed an opportunity for doing good … stipulating that his name should under no circumstances be divulged. His manner and bearing were simple.”