Dorado Country Club Estates (Tucson, Arizona)

 golf course, neighborhood, country club

 Upload a photo

In 1936 Miss Florence L. Pond built a lavishly landscaped 17 room mansion on 318 acres well east of Tucson (at the time a sleepy town of 32,000. Miss Pond sold the estate in 1947 to developers who spent $400,000 turning the mansion into the El Dorado Lodge. It opened in 1949 with an 18 hole golf course. In the early 70s, after several changes in ownership a large retirement community emerged with most of the construction between 1975 and 1982. Eventually the community would grow to 551 units (70 single family homes and 481 townhouses). In the early 1980s the covenants were changed to allow people of any age to buy into Dorado.
In 1985 the community was severed from the golf course and the new owner allowed the club house to begin to fray and he also cemented the swimming pool and allowed the 18 tennis courts go "back to nature".
In 2013 it was announced that he 26 acre central area where the clubhouse is located would be the site of a new Embassy Suites Hotel. The plan included a small retail area that will be built when the timing is right. The entire central area of Dorado will be landscaped the cleaned. As the residential component has never lost it's luster, the renewal of the clubhouse area will once again make Dorado the chic place it was when it first opened.