Marker 40 Golf Club

Par 62 layouts often get dismissed before the first tee shot, but Marker 40 Golf Club earns a closer look. A course built around this par signals a design philosophy centered on short-game precision and shot-making creativity rather than raw distance — expect a collection of par 3s and short par 4s that reward placement and punish carelessness more than they reward power.

Boardman sits in Morrow County along the Columbia River in northeastern Oregon, a stretch of high desert defined by wide skies, sagebrush terrain, and the dramatic contrast between arid benchland and the river corridor below. The area is better known for its wind energy farms and agriculture than for golf tourism, which gives Marker 40 the character of a genuine local course — the kind of place where regulars know every slope and break, and visitors find an honest round without pretension.

The name itself nods to the river culture of the Columbia, where navigational markers define the channel. That regional identity gives the club a sense of rootedness that separates it from generic layouts, even at a modest length.