The Quarry at La Quinta

For more than half a century the site was the Keller Pit, a county mine and gravel pit. Founder William Morrow and Tom Fazio turned it into a golf course, moving over 1.2 million cubic yards of earth and planting more than 4,000 trees and 80,000 shrubs and cacti. The course opened in 1994, and the club says Golf Digest has named it one of America's 100 Greatest every year since. Holes play across three levels, some on the quarry floor and some raised along its walls, with roughly 300 feet of elevation change across the property. The signature 10th is a 521-yard par five with a 70-foot waterfall feeding a stream along the fairway. Conditioning is the club's calling card.

The Quarry offers more golf than its single championship course suggests. A 10-hole short course, which the club says ranks among the top 25 par three courses in the world, uses flexible tees so that many holes can be played as either par threes or par fours, with yardages from 50 to 380. An 18-hole putting course is rerouted daily and kept to the same standard as the main course. Caddies are available, and since opening the club has kept a strict no tee time policy, so members can arrive and play when they like. Guests may play only when hosted by a member.

The clubhouse is modest by desert standards, about 21,000 square feet according to a local brokerage guide, and it is built into the quarry wall so that it seems to grow out of the rock. Inside are the golf shop, locker rooms, member dining room and a patio overlooking the course. Local guides also mention a health spa, tennis and private dining, and the club keeps guest cottages on the grounds, which brokerage guides describe as three four-bedroom cottages for visiting members and guests. The atmosphere is quiet by design: voice calls are not allowed in the clubhouse, there is a dress code for both golf and dining, and outside service staff are not tipped.

Membership at The Quarry is by member invitation only, and initial inquiries go to the assistant general manager. Because the club is invitation based, buying a home inside the gates does not by itself bring membership; buyers who want to play should start the conversation with members and the club early. The club does not publish its fees, and figures quoted on older brokerage pages vary widely, so treat any number you find online as out of date. The membership is kept relatively small, which is what makes the no tee time policy workable.

The residential side is small and quiet. Local brokerage guides count about 100 to 101 homes at build-out, with construction starting in 1997, and an additional 74 acres were added in 2002 for the Quarry Ranch enclave. Homes are mostly custom estates of roughly 4,000 to 10,000 square feet, along with villa homes and a handful of remaining custom homesites, several of them on Tom Fazio Lane and around half an acre or more. Recent homesite listings have ranged from under $1 million to about $2.5 million, and one local brokerage puts finished homes at roughly $1.9 million to $7 million. Expect mountain backdrops, low density and very little through traffic.