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40 • S P O R T I N G C L A S S I C S shooter, would be instrumental in founding the North Carolina Skeet Association. Though thousands came to compete, untold thousands more came to simply enjoy breaking clays. Among the notables who came in the 1930s and after were Bing Crosby and his pal Phil Harris, Clark Gable and Carole Lombard, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Amelia Earhart, Ernest Hemingway, Grits Gresham, and Will Rogers. The Tufts family reluctantly sold Pinehurst Resort in 1970. In 1993, two years shy of its centennial celebration, Pinehurst Gun Club was closed when The Resort's corporate owners deemed the land more valuable financially for golf than for shooting. On June 30, 1993, Bess Edwards, director of the Annie Oakley Foundation and great-grandniece of Annie Oakley, in a letter to The Resort, wrote: "How sad that some of the treasures of the past are being razed, replaced, and sometimes forgotten in the name of 'Progress.'" T he shooting sports are experiencing a seismic growth in participants— 36 million—and revenue—$110 billion in economic impact according to the National Shooting Sports Foundation. A whopping 866,000 jobs rank the outdoor industry as the world's seventh largest employer, and 2016 sales of $8 billion would rank the shooting sports as an industry 24th among the Fortune 100 companies. What better time to revive Pinehurst Gun Club? Indeed, the dream that James Walker Tufts and Annie Oakley shared is being reborn. With some 500 acres of land under contract in Pinehurst—an attractive offering to investors—and a terrific early response from prospective members, my husband, John, and I stand at the cusp of bringing back the Pinehurst Gun Club. (Visit www.PinehurstGunClubLLC.com for details. If you fill out the Pledge Form, no money down till we've reached 500 members.) If you're interested in investing in Pinehurst Gun Club's new and extremely bright and promising future, call John at (443) 624-8719. "Keep your eye on the high mark," Annie Oakley wrote, "and you will hit it. Not the first time, not the second, and maybe not the third. But if you keep on aiming and keep on trying, you'll hit the bull's eye of success." Thanks, Annie. That's just what we're doing. n to Pinehurst to recuperate and shoot with his good friends Annie and Frank. Annie gave three exhibitions a week at Pinehurst, accepting only donations, which went to the two things she wanted most in her life but never had—children and an education. Her support of the Sandhill Farm Life School provided 100 black American boys and girls each semester with new school uniforms, room, board, a practical education that gave them skills to make their way in the world, and a classical education to expand their intellectual horizons. In 1917, when the U.S. declared war on Germany and entered World War I, Annie revived her plan to form a female regiment and trained 300 women for homeland defense at Pinehurst. Though it never came to fruition, the concept certainly deserves respect. Frank Butler's many innovations changed the face of trap and skeet and have stood the test of time. But his greatest achievement, together with Leonard Tufts, was the invention of the first motorized trap, designed to make pulling targets safer for trappers, and effectually modernizing the shooting sports and forming the bedrock for its growth. Tufts patented his invention in 1917, then contracted a motor company in the Midwest to manufacture it, and replaced the old manual traps at the gun club. Soon Pinehurst was conducting eight annual open tournaments, drawing hundreds of registered shooters from all over the world to compete for high stakes in both trap and skeet. Correspondence between Frank and Leonard Tufts details the layout of the original Pinehurst Gun Club's shooting fields and reveals that Donald Ross corroborated in the design. Frank set the rules and regulations for the trap and skeet tournaments, which became cornerstones of the game. Later, Leonard Tufts' son, Richard, a champion skeet Pinehurst Gun Club in 1903 and became the club's first president. Donald Ross, an ardent gunner of grouse and partridge above his hometown of Dornoch in the highlands of Scotland, became the club's first secretary-treasurer. P inehurst Gun Club quickly became a household word when "America's sweetheart," sharpshooter Annie Oakley, and her husband, Frank Butler, adopted Pinehurst as their seasonal home in 1914. "Haven't seen any place we like better," Frank wrote to Leonard Tufts. Annie became the Gun Club's first shooting instructor, and over the next ten years she taught more than 15,000 men, women, and children "the fine art of shooting." Her "students" included business tycoon John D. Rockefeller, author Booth Tarkington, and poet Edgar Guest. She coached John Philip Sousa, a skeet champion who composed America's national march, Stars and Stripes Forever, while competing in a tournament at Pinehurst in 1897. Soon after Theodore Roosevelt returned from his 1,000-mile River of Doubt expedition in South America (which ultimately cut short his life), he came John and Laurie wiles are now seeking investors to help them bring back Pinehurst Gun Club.