“Shall the voters of the city and county of Denver authorize the release of the city-owned conservation easement on privately owned property known as the Park Hill Golf Course, which requires the land to be used primarily for golf-related purposes, and allow for commercial and residential development, including affordable housing and public regional park, trail and open space?”

— Denver April 4 ballot measure

Lucky Lindy landed there.

Dairy cows and racehorses lived there.

The property’s original owner committed suicide there.

Arnold Palmer, Bob Hope, Bing Crosby, Babe Didrikson Zaharias, a plethora of other pros and President Dwight Eisenhower played golf there.

Denver’s only Black Denver judge and other citizens of color, with the exception of heavyweight boxing champion Joe Louis, weren’t allowed on the grounds there until 1970.

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On June 4, 2000, young Tiger Woods held a golf clinic for 25 kids there. Two weeks later, he won the U.S. Open and became champion of all four majors in a row.

The 155-acre spread there has an extraordinary past, based on extensive research by professor and preeminent Colorado historian Thomas Noel, and was one deemed the site for a golf course in perpetuity. Next week, Denver voters will decide if the land will become the sprawling location for houses, a grocery, businesses and public parks with swingsets and meandering paths.

Park Hill was closed at the end of 2018 when the lease for the course and the clubhouse with a golf management company was concluded.

The 6,675-yard 18-hole golf course east of Colorado Boulevard, north of 35th Avenue and south of Interstate 70 is as dead as the brown grass on the legendary par 5 No. 6.

Previously, in the 1920s, those 521 yards of fairway and a large putting green had served as the dirt runway for the Lowery Airfield in northeast Denver. Soon after world-famous aviator Charles A. Lindbergh made the first nonstop solo flight from New York City to Paris in 1927, his triumphant tour of the United States included a stop in The Spirit of St. Louis at Denver. A photo from that day shows the airplane circling above a welcoming throng.

The crowd was standing in the area where, three years later, Nebraska native and engineer-stockbroker Bob Shearer would transform the runway and surrounding acreage on the edge of a residential development east of downtown Denver into fancy Park Hill Golf Club — with ivy-covered clubhouse walls.

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In 1936, Shearer relied on his Los Angeles connections to lure movie stars and wealthy corporate giants to the first of his annual Park Hill Invitational tournaments. Why did they come? “Calcutta’’-style golf gambling would surpass $100,000 at a time when pro golfers might earn a few thousand in a year.

Eventually, in 1957, the United States Golf Association shut down “Shearer’s Showcase,” and the course, Denver’s fourth, settled in for decades as a tree-lined, straightforward layout with busy roads, telephone lines, electrical towers and changing neighborhoods enveloping Park Hill subdivisions divided along racial lines.

Meanwhile, Park Hill Golf Course, on land owned by the George Clayton Trust, seemed like a transformation always waiting to happen. In the late 1960s, it was considered for the future place for the Auraria college campus, and the federal government planned in 1974 to move the Denver Mint to several acres on the edge of the golf course.

The expanse has experienced tumultuous times in the 136 years since Baron Allois Gillaume Eugene von Winkler bought, mapped out and named 32 blocks “Park Hill.’’ He built a mansion, a pound for stray dogs, and even a racetrack for horses before committing suicide in 1898.

Park Hill has been a political golf ball for a half-century with various owners, leasers, a trust fund proprietorship, projected plans, rezoning efforts, lawsuits and constant involvement and interference from mayors and city councils.

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In 2019, local Westside Investment Partners bought Park Hill from the George Washington Clayton Trust for $24 million, then was joined in the multipurpose development by the Holleran Group. They are supported by major civic and corporate organizations. Their strategies vehemently are opposed by neighborhood groups who want the Park Hill land to remain a conservation easement.

Nobody on either side wants a golf course.

The election April 4 will decide the fate of the Park Hill property. If you live in Denver, examine the details of this critical issue, and cast a vote.

After moving to Denver in 1974, I played golf in June at Park Hill Golf Course. On the sixth hole, my partner. a longtime regular, pointed out: “Lindy landed there. Lot’s happened here.’’