A property created to change lives is beginning its next chapter.
The Job Corps was created in 1964 as part of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s War on Poverty. Its purpose was to give young people access to education, vocational training, practical work experience, and a path toward meaningful employment. In Golconda, the center carried that mission forward from a remarkable property bordering the Shawnee National Forest.
The Golconda Job Corps Center closed in 2017. The property was later purchased with a vision to preserve its character and give it a new purpose: becoming The Camp, an extraordinary private golf and sporting club shaped by the land, the river, and the history already rooted here.
Located at Ohio River Mile Marker 899, The Camp is being reimagined as a place where exceptional golf, sporting traditions, relaxed hospitality, and time with family and friends come together. It is a new chapter for a property that has always been about opportunity, growth, and connection.
The golf experience will be shaped by the land rather than imposed upon it. The championship course, short course, practice facility, and driving range are planned to feel walkable, strategic, and inseparable from the Southern Illinois landscape.
Life at The Camp will reach far beyond golf. It might mean campfires and fireflies after dark, holidays with the whole family, concerts at dusk, or the beginning of a tradition that becomes your own. For those who want a lasting place here, a limited number of homesites will offer the opportunity to build a home where extended families can gather for generations.
The Camp should be about more than the people who gather here. We hope to work alongside nonprofits and foundations already doing good work, especially for young people. If this place can open doors, create opportunity, and leave something meaningful for the next generation, then it will have lived up to its history.
The Camp is being built for more than today. It is a place for parents and grandparents to gather their families, for children to grow up exploring the land, and for traditions and homes to be carried forward.
Stay for the people, the land, and the feeling that there is nowhere else you need to be. That is what The Camp is all about.