Crestwood Hills

Anita sits in the rolling, open farmland of southwest Iowa — a small town of fewer than 1,000 people along I-80, roughly equidistant between Des Moines and Omaha. Like dozens of communities this size across the Great Plains, it sustains a local golf course not as a destination but as a genuine civic institution, the kind of place where memberships pass between generations and the same groups have held standing tee times for decades. Crestwood Hills is that kind of course.

Southwest Iowa's terrain is more varied than outsiders expect — the region's glaciated hills create natural movement in the land, and a course named "Crestwood Hills" suggests the layout works with that topography rather than flattening it. Expect elevation changes, exposed ridgelines, and the persistent prairie wind that makes club selection a conversation every round.

Rural Iowa golf tends to be unhurried and unpretentious. Greens fees are modest, the pro shop doubles as a gathering place, and the course functions as one of the town's main social anchors from the first thaw through late fall.