Oregon lost another golf course in recent months, although we did gain one as well — sort of.

After years of subsidizing the municipally owned, privately managed Ontario Golf Club, the Ontario City Council voted late last year to shut down the 18-hole course. Its last day of operation was Dec. 31.

Citing more pressing budget priorities, the council opted to close the course and look to use it for other purposes. Various efforts to save the course were unsuccessful; one gained enough steam to warrant a review by the council, but was rejected. Ontario golfers are left with Country View, a 9-holer south of town, and Scotch Pines, an 18 hole course just across the Snake River in Payette, Idaho.

The Ontario Golf Club closure is particularly frustrating to Don and Pete, as we were scheduled to play it this summer during our Far Eastern Oregon swing for Golf Week 2015.

The “new” course is Colwood Golf Center in Portland, located on part of the site of the former Colwood National Golf Course. Colwood National, a venerable Portland course with great history, was sold last year. Adjacent to the outskirts of Portland International Airport’s property, roughly half of “old Colwood” is being turned into industrial land. Another large chunk is being developed into parkland/open space.

But rising from the ashes is the aforementioned Colwood Golf Center. The former Colwood National clubhouse is there, intact, as is the restaurant. Colwood Golf Center now features a large driving range and a 9 hole, par 3 layout. The new course is entirely on the south side of the slough, featuring huge greens with two holes per green (white and blue flags) to match the two tee boxes for each hole (white and blue). If you’re really ambitious, that means you can actually play 36 holes at the facility with a slightly different look and range — blue tees to blue flags, white tees to white flags, blue tees to white flags and white tees to blue flags.

While it’s nice that something golf was rescued from this changeover, for those of us who grew up with Colwood National as one of the “go to” Portland public courses, it’s hard not to be a little sentimental walking along Colwood Golf Center’s second and third holes while gazing north across the slough and remembering the grand old course as it used to be.