If one was to stand in the geographical center of Oregon, open a favorite GPS app and type “Golf Course” into the search bar, the phone screen would light up with a dazzling constellation of little red pins that spread all throughout the Portland Metropolitan area, Willamette Valley, High Desert and elsewhere within the Beaver State’s boundaries.
Give or take, there are about 220 golf courses in Oregon. If someone came up with the idea to somehow play them all, then, it only seems right that such a journey would originate from the capital city.
Since 2022, Mark Butler, a Salem-made construction business owner, and three friends have been working on that exact goal and finally completed it this year. Having too much fun, Mark and one of the other guys, his friend Scott Turner, are working on doing the same in Washington, Idaho and Alaska.
“It’s to the degree where we’re even looking for crazy little courses,” said Butler of the spreadsheets he’s prepared that are chock-full of the most finite venues, like a six-hole track in Bend behind a larger course’s driving range.
In Mark’s case, the undertaking entailed playing anywhere from 50 to 70 rounds of golf in each of the previous four years or so, be the venues public, private, secretive, 9-hole, 18-hole of any other denomination.
While Mark only started a few years ago, the larger idea has been in motion for quite a while longer than that. Acquainting with a group of guys in the mid-2000s who he’d later become closer pals with, Mark says, “One of them came up with the idea that we’d love to play every golf course in Oregon.”
As Mark kept relative track of the other guys’ progress without truly being part of the challenge, he finally decided it was too fun to resist, and the group dealt him in.
By then, the guys only had about 25 courses to go in Oregon, but allowed Mark to count the 90 or so Oregon tracks he’d already played over the years. Within a couple more years, Mark closed the gap, and when May 2026 rolled around, the Golf Course at Birch Creek in Pendleton was the final destination to check off the list.
“I stayed married,” joked Mark, in reference to the amount of time he’d spent on the road in pursuit of the achievement. “So that was great.”
Playing every golf course in Oregon did not come without some complex preparation that utilized tricks of Mark’s trade. In addition to spreadsheets, Butler and his friends made use of Bluebeam – a popular document app in the construction industry – to create maps of the courses they’d still yet to play.
Once they homed in on a particular area, they gave a course its due with full awareness of how little time was to lose. Crossing off course after course, mile after mile, required days in which all of 36, 54 or 72 holes were on the agenda.
“It’s a fine line,” he says. “We don’t want to feel rushed and we don’t to miss a tee time, but we try to get the first tee time of the day. And then we just kind of stack it from there.”
Eventually, Mark and Scott determined they’d want to play every course in Washington as well as in Idaho and Alaska. Utilizing similar efficiency strategies this summer, the traveling tandem is already 100 courses through Washington and at least a handful of the way through Idaho.
“We both play fast, we enjoy the company, and we love the adventure of planning the routes, planning the days, trying to squeeze in that extra nine holes,” said Mark of the strategies that have applied in those other states too.
Easy enough is booking tee times through pro shops of various public venues. But naturally, the question of getting onto the private and exclusive venues comes into play. In such cases, Mark has found himself relying on auctions and various small tournaments to find his way on. His status as an Illahe Hills member also helps back up his golfing credibility in and around the area.
Take when he saw an opportunity to hop on Longview (Wash.) Country Club at a low-traffic time, for instance.
“It was pouring rain in the middle of winter, and we're like, ‘Well, what's the risk?’” he said. “So we just drove up to the clubhouse and said, ‘Hey, we're country club members down in Salem. Would you mind if we played?’ There was not a vehicle in the parking lot. They were like, ‘Yeah, if you want to.’”
Along the way, part of what has made the journey so fun is the unique and varying nature of the golf courses’ terrain across the ever-varying Northwest landscape.
“Everybody knows Bandon Dunes, and now Gamble Sands,” Mark said. “But there's a 12-hole course near Coos Bay, tucked up into this alcove right off the ocean in a little canyon. When I played it, I was literally the only person on the golf course for an hour and a half. You just don't get those experiences in other places.”
He was referring to Sunset Bay Golf Course, in Coos Bay, Ore.
A by-product is the time and memories made with his buds. Mark said that during a given trip, nighttime hours away from the course can entail golf tip-heavy YouTube videos and a beverage or two amongst the crew.
After completing Oregon, most of the other guys were satisfied, but Mark and Scott have plenty of work to do yet. In line with their prior meticulous planning the guys are planning how they might get onto some private Idaho courses, as well as the entirety of Alaska’s tracks. For the latter, the plan is already a couple of two-week trips up north to knock out each of the 22 courses in the Last Frontier.
Evidence on paper – scorecards, yardage books, pro shop receipts, the ubiquitous selfies – exists to prove his track record, as well as accurate Handicap Index.
“We post all our scores,” Mark said. “All of us do.”