Pinehurst and Moore County are well-known as a home to the U.S. Open and major golf resorts that have attracted a large retirement population. Both Pinehurst and Moore County are growing in population, thanks to the area’s tremendous appeal as a place to live. Not only golf, but also the quaint villages of Pinehurst and Southern Pines, the year-round climate, and relatively low cost-of-living help attract a growing number of families and non-golfers to Pinehurst.

Village retail and office space remains filled, despite operating deficiencies and high rents. Housing development is accelerating and prices are escalating rapidly in the area as a growing retirement population and younger families opt for the amenity value of a Pinehurst lifestyle.
In 1895 Tufts purchased 6,000 acres of virtual wasteland in the Sandhills of North Carolina-land that had been burned and clear-cut in the manufacture of tar and turpentine-and hired as his landscaper the illustrious Frederick Law Olmsted, designer of Central Park.
Olmsted found Tufts' site unpromising; it was little more than a desert. But he drew up a village master plan-a series of curving roads radiating from and returning, like lines of magnetic force, to a central village green-and he also dispatched one of his associates to oversee the planting of some 250,000 trees and shrubs. A gabled hotel, the Holly Inn, quickly went up, and so did dozens of "cottages"-shuttered and clapboarded single-family residences. Pinehurst was open for business. It looked-and still does-like a little slice of New England transplanted to the pinewoods.
The original sports at Pinehurst were tennis, shooting (Annie Oakley ran the gun club), lawn bowling, and-Tufts' favorite-a game called roque, which was a sort of one-armed version of croquet. Golf arrived, by accident, in 1897, after farmers complained that their cows were being disturbed by some of Mr. Tufts' guests whacking tiny white balls around the pasture. A little nine-holer and a clubhouse were promptly built, but the defining moment in Pinehurst history came in 1900, when Tufts hired Ross, newly emigrated from Scotland, to supervise his golf operations.
Ross' association with the resort lasted until his death, in 1948, and though he went on to build hundreds of courses, including several in the Sandhills area, none meant as much to him as his beloved No. 2, which was both his masterpiece and a constant work-in-progress. Ross' other great Pinehurst legacies were the first driving range ever-Maniac Hill, as Pinehurst's practice ground was called-and the Pine Crest Inn, on Dogwood Street in the village, which he owned and operated from 1921 until his death and which hasn't changed much at all in the years since.