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:
“The history of every country begins in the heart of a man or a woman.”
—Willa Cather (18761947)
“The History of the world is not the theatre of happiness. Periods of happiness are blank pages in it, for they are periods of harmonyperiods when the antithesis is in abeyance.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (17701831)
“The second day of July 1776, will be the most memorable epoch in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forever more”
—John Adams (17351826)