The club that came first
Before Troon, before Troon North, before DC Ranch, there was Pinnacle Peak Country Club. Developer Jerry Nelson founded it in 1976 at 8701 E Pinnacle Peak Rd, in empty high desert south of Pinnacle Peak, and it was the first private golf facility in north Scottsdale. The roads that reach it now, Pima Road and Pinnacle Peak Road among them, had to be developed for it.
It has been member-owned since 1976, and it is small on purpose: 325 regular members. The first homes went up in 1977, mostly custom houses on half-acre and one-acre lots that back onto the fairways, and the whole community sold out within five years.
The course is the surprise. Surrounded by boulder-and-saguaro target golf, Pinnacle Peak’s 18 holes by Dick Turner are traditional: green, tree-lined fairways, lakes, landscaped rock waterfalls and a lighted fountain. It is the golf course a 1970s club expected to build, transplanted to the desert, and its members like it that way.
It is private, and there is no public play. The view of it, and of everything that grew up around it, is from the trail up the peak.
Membership and what a visitor can do
Membership is by equity: the 325 golf memberships include green fees and all club facilities, and a separate social category is limited to 50. A North Scottsdale real-estate team’s guide, updated in September 2026, lists both as sold out, with no social memberships available. The club takes inquiries through a form on its website. Prices are not published.
The club has a golf shop, dining, banquets and catering, tennis and pickleball courts, a pool and a fitness center, for members and their guests.
Guests play with a member.
For visitors, the corner is the attraction. The Citadel, the shopping center at Pima and Pinnacle Peak, is next door, with 8700 at the Citadel and Michael’s at the Citadel for dinner. Pinnacle Peak Park is a short drive north, the best early-morning hike in this part of the city, with views across the golf communities that followed this one. For public golf with the same scenery, Troon North takes tee times. Our Pinnacle Peak and Troon guide covers the district.
How north Scottsdale’s golf belt began
In the mid-1970s Pinnacle Peak was cattle country with a steakhouse at its foot and dirt roads around it. Jerry Nelson’s club was a bet that buyers would come that far for a private club and a custom lot, and the course he built for them was a traditional country-club layout, not a desert one. The bet paid: the community sold out in five years, at the far northern edge of the 1970s city.
The wave that followed changed the area. Scottsdale annexed its northern desert in large pieces through the 1980s, and the master-planned golf communities came behind: Troon Country Club in 1986, Troon North from 1990, then DC Ranch and the rest. The Citadel at the corner was built for the residents those communities brought, and Pinnacle Peak Park was later fought for and reopened as public land when luxury homes closed in around it.
Pinnacle Peak Country Club stayed what it was: small, member-owned and green. In a part of Scottsdale where most clubs are newer, larger and designed around the desert, that makes it a period piece in the best sense, the place where the north Scottsdale golf map started. For the courses you can play without a member, see golf without a membership.