Pekin Country Club: Central Illinois' Championship Club Since 1963

Some private clubs measure their standing by exclusivity. Others measure it by the kind of place they are on a Saturday in June — when the range is full, the pool is loud with kids, and the last group of the morning is making the turn toward the Bird's Nest for lunch. Pekin Country Club, set in the gentle river country of central Illinois, has always belonged to the second kind.

Roughly fifteen minutes south of Peoria, in Tazewell County, Pekin Country Club is the area's premier private club — and one of its most enduring institutions. The club's roots in Pekin reach all the way back to 1916, when a group of local families incorporated the original country club on the bluffs above the Illinois River. The championship course that members play today opened on its present grounds in 1963, and the club has spent the six decades since becoming the social and golfing heart of the community.

A Larry Packard Championship Course

The golf is the anchor. Pekin's 18-hole layout was designed by Larry Packard — the prolific mid-century architect behind Innisbrook's famed Copperhead Course in Florida — and it remains a genuine championship test. From the back tees the course plays to 6,832 yards at a par of 72, carrying a course rating of 72.1 and a slope of 130 over bentgrass greens and mature, tree-lined fairways. Five sets of tees, from 5,667 to 6,832 yards, make it as playable for a junior or a first-year member as it is demanding for a single-digit handicap.

It is a course with pedigree and stories to match. In the club's earlier days, the great Sam Snead once played here and came within two strokes of the course record — a round that locals still talk about, and the kind of history that gives a club its texture.

The Bird's Nest, the Pool, and the Family Club

A great club is more than its golf course, and Pekin has built a full family-club experience around the 18 holes. At its center is the Bird's Nest, the club's award-winning restaurant — a fine-dining room that has become a destination in its own right for members and their guests, complemented by casual dining and a calendar of private events and banquets.

Beyond the table, the amenities are built for households, not just golfers: an Olympic-size swimming pool for summer afternoons, a practice range and putting green, a full pro shop, and event spaces that host weddings, tournaments, and celebrations throughout the year. It is the rare club where a member can play a competitive eighteen in the morning and bring three generations of family to dinner that night.

An Open Door — and a Reason to Walk Through It

For most of its history, joining a club of Pekin's standing meant a significant initiation fee. Today, under new ownership invested in growing the membership, the club is doing something unusual for a club of this caliber: welcoming new members with no initiation fee at all. For families across the Peoria–Pekin area who have long admired the club from the outside, it is the most accessible the membership has been in a generation.

It adds up to something central Illinois doesn't have many of: a championship private club with real history, a serious golf course, a genuinely good kitchen, and a family membership that has never been more attainable. For a household weighing where to spend its summers — and its golf seasons — for the next twenty years, the conversation is worth having.