Fort Zumwalt DGC is located in a very busy, multiuse park just minutes off the expressway. If you're trying to find hole 1 it's best to park on the road near the restroom building. Hole 1 is just south of there. There's no actual parking lot for the disc golf. This is actually pretty easy to find since the park road is one way.

The course is a mixture of park style holes and more tightly wooded ones on the back half. There is elevation throughout, though nothing too extreme. There are trees to contend with on nearly every hole out here.

The baskets are nice, newer looking Innova Discatchers. These were all in great shape and caught nicely. There's a single basket but two pin positions per hole. Always like to see multiple pin placements.

The tee pads are concrete. These are a little on the narrow side but work perfectly fine for a course of this length. There are also two tees per hole which is definitely a pro. Between the two pin placements and two tee pads there's quite a bit of replay value out here. The long tees range from just 30 or so feet behind the shorts to probably around 100 or so feet back. Really offers up some different looks.

The tee signs are pretty good here. They feature a basic hole map showing both tees. Red (short) and white (long) as well as both different pin positions. There's also next tee arrows and any OB is shown as well. In addition to that they have the hole #, par and distances to each pin from either tee. The best part was that they had a hole drilled and bolt attached to whichever pin was in play. Always love to see this. All of them were accurate too. The tee signs are only at the white tees.

The course was really clean and well maintained when we went. There's trash cans throughout not really any trash laying around for being such a busy park. The course is free and up for most of the year.

The layout is kinda wonky. There's lots of long transitions between holes. It wasn't as bad as I initially feared it'd be, but still a very disjointed flow. I'd highly recommend using the Udisc map or else printing one out. It is doable without one, but expect some extra wandering.

The course doesn't start and end by the same area. It's pretty close, but depending on where you park it's still a bit of a walk.

The holes are all on the shorter side. There's no real chance to just air it out either, if that's your thing. Hitting your line and staying in the fairway is the name of the game out here.

The first few holes, as others have mentioned, feel like filler holes. The feel like they're just there to get the hole count up to 18.

The course is closed for a holiday lights festival or something like that from sometime in October through the holidays I guess.

This was a really solid course. I was a little worried about the disjointed nature of the course since there was potential for thunderstorms the day we played. Turns out it stayed pretty clear and the walks weren't too terrible between holes.

This one is definitely worth visiting if in the area or just travelling thru. Fun course with lots of birdie opportunities but plenty of trouble you can find yourself in. This will be one that I'll be sure to revisit the next time I'm down this way. Just a good, par 3 woods course.

Fort Zumwalt Park's Disc Golf Course, known also as "The Fort", snakes around a shady 48-acre park that resides on a War of 1812 fort site. This relatively short 18-hole course provides a variety of shot shapes that will test your accuracy to nail birdies and ability to navigate tight wooded environments.

Location of Fort Zumwalt Park is very convenient, being just minutes off of I-70 via the exit for Main St./Highway K. After a quick right on Veterans Memorial, the park will soon be on your left. There's plenty of gas stations and restaurants around the area if you need anything before or after your round. This course is also near a number of other courses; you have College Meadows and Laurel Park to the east, T. R. Hughes to the North, and the trio of New Melle Lakes, Quail Ridge, and Indian Camp Creek to the west, making it very possible to make this course a part of a full day of golf. Smokin' Aces is also just down the highway for all of your disc golf needs, offering a wide variety of discs, bags, carts, and other disc golf accessories. There's a Play-It-Again sports in St. Peter's as well with a smaller offering of disc options, though they still typically have Innova, Discraft, and Trilogy options.

Park amenities at Fort Zumwalt are nice, and compliment the beauty of this park. The road through the park is one way, so don't overshoot your parking area. For the disc golf course, park when there is a bathroom on your right and you start to see the lake on your left. This lake provides fishing opportunities, though the park website says fishing is currently prohibited while the newer fish mature. Further up the road, you'll find a rebuilt Zumwalt's Fort and a restored Herald House, both fun spots for any history buff. One of the last things your drive by is the playground and a reservable shelter. Apparently, there's also a model train display somewhere in the park as well. In addition to all of this, you will see plenty of folks using the walking paths and trails around the park. The park hosts a Christmas light display annually, so the disc golf course may be inaccessible around that holiday.

Course Equipment at The Fort is pretty nice. Each hole has two concrete tee pads, and they are designed to resemble wood, a nice touch that I assume is a callback to the history of the land this park resides on. The baskets are DISCatchers, and are in good shape. There's a large tee sign at each long tee, and each sign provides a graphic of the hole layout, a general direction to the next tee, the hole's par, and hole distances from each tee to each pin. Each hole has two pin locations. There's also a limited amount of directional signage to help with navigation on the course.

Course design at The Fort revolves around tight and primarily short fairways. The first six holes snake around the south and west sides of the lake, with the rest of the course snaking through the woods in the northern half of the park. Some holes like 3, 4, 11, and a few others play relatively open with some mature trees or areas of brush to shape your shot. The other 2/3rds of the course plays in a tough wooded environment, where the level of accuracy you have can determine whether you're 5 under par or 10 over.

Variety at this course mainly revolves around shot shapes, as there aren't really any open and long holes to air longer drives out. Most of the holes play relatively short, with the short tees playing mostly under 300 feet depending on which pins are in place. Where the course lacks in power drive opportunities, it tries and, in many places, succeeds in providing tight and challenging fairways through the woods. Backhand and forehand dominant players of either hand dominance will find plenty of shots that benefit them. Holes 4, 9, and 17 benefit right hand back handed players with left turning fairways. On the flip side, holes 3, 7, and 16 turn to the right. The other holes vary in how extreme the fairway turns, or how the trees affect your shot, with plenty of holes providing relatively straight shots as well that will cater to multiple shot types. The amount of woods you will have to contend with will vary as well within the wooded holes, with 7, 15, and 18 being especially challenging.

Course difficulty managed to cater to a relatively wide range of players, primarily because of the two tee pads on each hole. The shorter tee pads provide distances that make the holes a little easier for newer players that are working on accuracy, while the longer tees provide plenty of challenges for intermediate to advanced players. Even from the short tees, this is probably one of the harder courses around the area for newer players when considering the number of trees to navigate on some of the fairways here.

Navigation can be a challenge here during your first, and even second, round. As a tighter park in terms of how much is going on and how much space it has to work with, this is a disc golf course that has to navigate around other park uses, something that many other disc golf courses in St. Louis are lucky enough to avoid needing to do. This results in a course that at times feels chopped up, with some awkward walks between holes. The walks between 3 and 4, 6 and 7, 9 and 10, and 15 to 16 are probably the ones that feel either the hardest to navigate or the easiest to mix up in my opinion, though there are other transitions that other reviewers have mentioned. All of these transitions would feel less burdensome with additional signage, but there's limited signage on site other than the tee signs. Even the tee signs only help so much. Hole 9's sign, for example, only points in the general direction of 10, and while there is a directional sign as well after this hole, this is still a touch transition given where hole 10 is. Udisc helps with this issue as well, of course, but I'm of the opinion that you shouldn't need an app that many newer players won't have to navigate a course.

Proximity to other park uses also is an issue on some holes. Holes 4 and 5 play pretty close to walking paths and the lake, and a disc that goes astray can easily head towards other park goers. Holes 9, 15, and 16 are also holes where a bad kick or bad throw could end up on a street.

Difficulty and fairness of some of the shots on course feel a little unnecessary. Hole 2 has a shot through a patch of trees that are close enough to each other that the opening drive feels like a poke and pray situation. Considering how open the rest of the hole is, this added challenge feels unnecessary. Hole 7 feels similar, only the trees are throughout the fairway on a blind shot around to the right. Holes 14 and 15 also have significantly tough openings to hit, with 15 being a rough combination of having a low ceiling, tight fairway, and uphill landing zone before going somewhat downhill again. This park has a tough plot of land to fit 18 holes, and there are many factors that come into play when it comes to designing courses. That being said, some of the hole designs on this course feel like they could have been altered to provide challenges that feel fairer.

Pin placement notation is missing from the tee signs on this course, which can be troublesome on many of the holes on this course. Hole 13 has two openings that are hard to see from a distance, and it's hard to tell where the basket is without walking up the fairway first. Hole 15 is another spot where not knowing where the pin is located is an issue, as the two pins are in very different locations, and throwing to the wrong placement can lead to a difference of 1 or 2 throws on your score. Other holes, like 2, 7, and 9, have similar issues. A simple way to notate which pin is in place, like a bolt on the sign as many courses employ, would be an easy fix to this. If you're going to have multiple pins on a hole, this is a feature that seems like an easy thing to add.

Variety is present in terms of shot shapes, but there aren't many opportunities for folks who like longer drives.

Difficulty, while catering to a decent variety of players, as I said in the pros, newer players may not find this course as fun as others in the area, and may leave this course feeling discouraged.

Overall, The Fort is a fun spot for anyone who likes tight and wooded courses, and its proximity to other courses make it easy to make a part of a full day of golf. If you're in the area, be sure to add it to your list of courses to play. If you're visiting the area, I'd recommend the other 18 holes in St. Charles county, as well as other courses in the greater St. Louis area like the JB courses, Sioux Passage, or La Vista before this one. This course isn't a bad one, per say; its navigation and occasionally gimmicky-feeling challenges just don't stand up as much in an area that has so many other great courses.

Come check out The Fort if you're a fan of the woods. If you're in the area, be sure to go give Smokin' Aces a visit as well; they have great customer services and are a great resource for the area.

Fort Zumwalt Park is actually a fairly fun disc golf course with some good shots. There is a nice variety of park-style and wooded hole. The course had good elevation changes for uphill/downhill shots, although it doesn't have any cool elevated tee-type shots. The pin placements are done really well; it's a rollaway waiting to happen. There are two tee pads and there is a big difference in the length of most of the pads. The course plays much easier from the short pads and can handle a good variety of skill levels because of it. The course leans to the technical, there are no open bomber holes. However some of the wooded shots are long for the type of hole they are. There is a good bit of challenge in the design. The park itself is very nicely maintained, and once you get past hole 6 there isn't much conflict with other park uses despite this being a muti-use park. Shot for shot, it's a nice disc golf course. None of the shots stand out to me as really notable, but most of them were pretty solid in design.

The park itself is well designed and well maintained. It's a really nice spot to spend an afternoon. The wooded holes were cleaned out very well, there wasn't a lot of punishing rough to contend with and finding your disc after it ricocheted crazily of a spindly little tree in the fairway was pretty straightforward. There were restrooms by hole one. The baskets were DISCatchers, and the long tee on each hole had a tee sign.

One of the limitations of designing a disc golf course in a multi-use park is that you sometimes have to chop up the course into sections and the flow isn't good. While I understand that, the flow here is atrocious. You play to hole 3 into a corner of the park, then wander across the street and up a hill searching for any sign of the next tee. After hole 5 you walk down the street hoping that you will eventually find another tee. The path to hole 7 is a long, meandering hike. You play 7-8, cross the road and throw hole 9, then you end up on a path that goes two directions and no indication of which way you should go. If you go left, you end up at the tee for 13. If you go right, you come out of the woods into a road/parking lot and start searching. The tee for hole ten is way over behind a building. There was one little "10" with an arrow on some sort of box along the way, otherwise no directional sign at all. You play holes 10-11, cross the street and backtrack to the tee for 12, head into the woods for holes 13-14, have to cross the road to find hole 15 and then...Aaargh! The next tee you come to is the tee for hole 17. Hole 16 is across the street. Even after you figure that out, the tee is wrapped way back around by the park entrance. The only redeeming part of the flow here is that you already walked past 17's tee so you know you have to go back across the road to get to it. All along this meandering nightmare of course flow, there was exactly one little directional sign on the whole course that I saw. The wandering meandering flow helps the quality of the golf, but if you are going to design a course this way it HAS to have directional signage to help people figure out where to go. This course does not have adequate signage, which makes it frustrating for a non-local to navigate.

Some of the shots don't really have a clear route that I could tell. I threw a lot of poke and pray shots. It was a fun layout, but it needed some more trees cleared out to be a fair design. Hole 7, 15 and 17 stood out to me as holes that should have been good, but were too pinballish. A couple of other holes (2 & 11) have the tee right behind some big trees for no good reason.

There is no parking lot, you park on the street. There isn't really any indication of where the course starts while you are on the road, so it's hard to know where to park. It turns out that it really doesn't matter because hole 18's pin is nowhere near hole 1's tee. The locals seemed to park by hole 7 to spilt the distance.

Hole 11 is marked as a double mando between two trees that are maybe 20' in front of the tee. There is no safety reason for a mando there, so I assume it's an attempt to make the hole harder. It's really, really dumb to have a mando right in front of a tee for no reason, and a double mando in front of a tee is double dumb. The signs do not look like park signs, so it may be the work of locals. I ignored it.

The tee signs show the A and B placement, but do not have a way to indicate which placement the pin is in. A lot of the shots are blind from the tee, so there is a lot of walking up to see where the basket is. There are also little arrows on the tee signs to direct you to the next tee...if you can remember where they were pointing to after you finished playing the hole. They were pretty ineffective in helping me find my way around.

The course I played right before Fort Zumwalt was The Canyons in Lockport, IL. The Canyons has a similar issue in that the park is multi-use and the course is chopped up in sections, but the flow is a non-issue at The Canyons because of the amount and effectiveness of the signage they use to get you from one hole to the next. To me it was a interesting study in directional signs done right/directional signs done wrong (or more accurately, not done at all.)

Fort Zumwalt disc golf course ends up being a hard course for me to rate. It is in a very nice park, so that's a positive. The shots themselves were well designed INT/ADV-level shots. On the other hand, the course has a lot of issues. Flow is bad, signage is inadequate, the course doesn't end close to where it starts and there are a few too many poke and pray holes. I think it comes down to what kind of experience you want. If a pretty challenging INT/ADV-level technical course is your cup of tea, the issues probably won't matter to you. If you are local and know the layout, a lot of the frustrations with the flow become a moot point. If you're on a road trip and really don't want to waste your time trying to figure out a mind-boggling flow pattern, the shots are not good enough to override that. It's a good course, it just has limitations.

The usual: Great concrete pads- both long and short. Signage was excellent- always located at the long tee pads. Multiple pin placement options- have played there more than once- so it's been a different look each time. Wooded, but not so wooded that you can't recover from a tree hit. (Not unless multiple throws strike a tree like I did on #2 today!!)
Different looks and lengths on each hole.
No overly memorable or signature hole, but absolutely no clunkers either.
Nice location in the middle of a community park.

The walk between a couple holes was long and disrupted the flow a bit. (2-3; 3-4; 5-6; 6-7; 9-10; 15-16)

Fort Zumalt and neighboring Quail Ridge are similar courses. I really enjoy Fort Zumalt compared to how I feel about QR (Read that review on the QR page)
To echo another reviewer or two.... thinning out a fairway or two would bring my score up to at least 3.5. But it is what it is... a good course, thus the 3.

I waited several months to see if the holes that have virtually no fairway would be cleaned up a bit - well it has been in for a long while, and I think what you see is what you get with this one. I want to give less than 3.0, but in reality this course is about 5 or 6 holes away from a great course, so I'm giving it a 3, which = Good - per the rating scale.
Most of this course is GREAT. Excellent use of the land and some really great holes.
It is a typical Gateway/Dave Mac design requiring good placement shots and some good risk/reward - with the exception of the holes I list below.

If it were not for the handful of TERRIBLE gimmicky holes that have a gauntlet of trees and good shots are about 90% dependent on good luck we would have a true gem.
All off the comments below reflect the long tees. I have not played the shorts, so please take that into consideration.

Hole 2 - Tee Pad is positioned behind a group of old growth trees. There are several gaps to hit - all of which are not a true shot shape and are too small to consider fair. After that it is wide open and the basket is tucked into the tree line on the right. This may have been an attempt at Risk/Reward but was a failed attempt. When it comes to competition this is the kind of hole that players dread because skill is not the key factor here. I have resorted to throwing a little forehand roller off the tee, then a putter upshot, and treat it like a 300 FT PAR 4. Yes, I have aired out a perfect backhand and parked the hole - but the idea of Risk/Reward is conceptually about a player having to decide - any experience player knows you don't go for this type of hole in competition because the risk is just silly. The gaps that you actually have to hit to shape a true shot shape become about 3 feet wide or less (when factoring in the trees closer/farther).

Hole 7 - Another PAR 3 distance hole that is best treated as a PAR 4 if you don't want to deal with the 40 or so 4 inch diameter trees spread throughout the fairway. There is a legit side arm gap that you can hit on the left side of the fairway, but because of the curve of the left tree line and numerous trees that eventually interrupt the line, a lay up is best. Once again - this shot can be parked - but it is completely dependent on luck and going for it means risking hitting a small tree and shooting into the rough. Remove some trees and create a fairway here and this hole is great - it has a really cool shape and green down toward a pond. As it is right now - TRASH

Hole 8 B - OK, hole 8 A is a great tunnel shot - tight but fair - more recently I noticed they put in another position up to the right - so you have a clean tunnel for 200 feet, then just a bunch of skinny trees before you reach the basket - for this position - best shot is a straight up the middle and then try to make a 50 footer. There is a clean gap, but it's a 90 degree turn at the end of the short tunnel so...... - STUPID

Hole 11 - Again, more huge trees just off the tee pad and an EXTREMELY LOW ceiling. Problem is, if you hit the first gap, you are heading right for more giant trees. Once again, it is really close to an excellent hole with moving the tee pad over and creating a tight and risky line to go for it, or lay up. Not sure what they were thinking here. Great green, I especially like the long position. For me RHBH - I throw a low skip hyzer towards 10s fairway - typically hit a tree and land somewhere in the middle and putter up shot.

Hole 14 - No comment - this is simply a waste of life and makes me want to puke. Everyone try to hit the little S turn 150ft side arm gap that turns out to be about 3 foot side when you factor in the early/late trees.

Hole 15 - Dear God, who did this???? What really gets me is this should be the best hole on the course. I guess they figured they could make it a PAR 5 by delegitimizing the fairway - from the long pad you have a low ceiling and your aiming point is a large tree directly in the middle of the fairway about 200 FT away (first mistake). The landing area given is small, but worst of all - ITS NOT A GOOD PLACE TO LAND. If you throw a nice touch shot about 100 feet in front of the am pad (this is the only shot that negates throwing through the woods and crossing your fingers) and land dead center of the mulch - well, you have no good 2nd shot. The shape of the first fairway - s turn through the woods, does not allow for a 2nd shot to at least get you out to the open - this means you are actually better off when your tee shot lands off the fairway and you may have a chance to get out and maybe get an Eagle putt pending everything lines up OK. I hate to play lucky golf so I throw the touch shot off the tee, then a gimmicky little forehand or putter back hand another 150 feet up the fairway or so, and then try to nut my 3rd shot on the really cool sloping and guarded green. What I hate most is that with the removal of some trees, this could be one of those memorable holes, but as it stands, it is just a gimmick one again based on luck rather than skill.

Hole 17 - this hole is not as bad as the ones above - but I'm adding it because 90% of the golfers are going to throw straight up the gut - and when the long position is in, this is pretty much a poke and hope halfway there . I throw a huge spike hyzer up and around, but this is a big shot and the majority of casual players cannot execute this.

I love challenging holes. I especially love Risk/Reward. What I am describing above is challenging by gimmickry, not by good design. When I first played, I just assumed it was a work in progress, then pads went in, tape came off trees, and it's going to take 10 or 15 years to make fairways via tree smacks.
So far, it is the worst Gateway design I've played - and I consider Dave to be a premier designer.
**Keep in mind there are a lot of politics in course design and every removal of a tree requires permission - for all I know, this was not the final plan, but ended up being so. I don't have those details, so I'm giving an honest review as is. **
I sincerely appreciate all the hard work that went into it, and this area has been begging for a disc golf course for many years.
I have 7 holes listed above, but one is jus a pin placement and the other is really not that bad. Meaning there are only 5 throw away holes and 13 really good ones.
My 3 rating is being nice because 5 holes is a lot, and this is perhaps one of the worst courses for tournament play due to the high luck factor on some of these holes. I assure you many high level players echo my thoughts here.
I know there are golfers out there that like this type of gold - it certainly does level the playing field and allow average Joes to out shoot above average Joes with a couple of bad breaks.
All the holes are fixable by creating true fairways and removing some trees.
Make no mistake, I'm not all about cutting down the forest - but if you cannot create a reasonable fairway, then don't put in a permanent tee pad - bottom line.

The most frustrating part about it is that my scoring spread here is always based on if I get shafted on one of the above mentioned holes or note. I think 54 is really solid here.

I look forward to seeing the course in another 10 years or so.....

**UPDATE**
I haven't been out to this course in a while, but I'm please to share that they've made some serious upgrades to the course that will certainly push up my rating! Multiple pin placements & concrete tee pads - tee signs and a lot of the underbrush has been cleared.
New Baskets - Restrooms - Works Out Your Short Game - You Get a Good Walk in - Well-Maintained Park

Honestly, the best part about this course is that it is another place to play in St. Charles which means the sport is continuing to grow and the other courses (hopefully) won't be as crowded. The brand new Discatchers are nice and easy to see once you walk up the fairways. This course is a great place to hone in on your forehand shots and turnover midranges (if you throw RHBH).

The new pin placements and multiple tee pads give this course a lot more variety and challenge. There are still areas with broken flow that would be difficult to navigate without a map or guide. But, the course seems to get a lot of traffic, so shouldn't be too hard to find someone to drop in with or follow.

Interesting Layout - Repetitive Hole Design - Crowded Park - Lots of Casuals - Parking

The first 6 holes aren't terrible in regards to flow, but there is more walking then there needs to be. The walk between 6 & 7 on the other hand, is pretty long. Hole 9 does not cycle back to the parking area. They have better signage now, but without it, you'd easily get lost. The park wraps around a beautiful lake but (unfortunately) it doesn't really come into play except on hole 6.

Nearly every hole was a left to right shot. If you're left handed, you'll probably love it but the rightys need bring plenty of understable mids, flick shots and patience. This course also attracts a lot of casuals that don't understand speed of play or etiquette.

The recent updates at this course double the enjoyment you can have here. Again, the flow is still somewhat fragmented in places, but the multiple pin placements and multiple tee pads give you a ton of options each time you approach the hole. The new tee signs are also really helpful for those who haven't been to the course before. I still think they should get a second set of signs for the shorter tee pads, but it's obvious that this course is moving in the right direction!

Course located within 1 mile of interstate I-70. Nice manicured city park. 2 sets of natural tee pads with whites set up as longs and reds set up for youth/ beginners. Innova yellow banded baskets for greater ease for locating baskets. Good use of moderate elevation changes. Moderately wooded on half the holes and heavily wooded on the remainder of holes. Currently there are temporary signs with distances labeled for both sets of tees. Next hole signs with arrows for greater ease with navigation of course. Excellent variety of hole types as no 2 holes are alike.

Lack of concrete tee pads however there are plans to install pads this fall. Interference with other park goers is inevitable on some holes. Lack of wide open longer holes. Still a work in progress with some very tight and unforgiving fairways.

Fort Zumwalt park provides for a very fun and unique disc golf experience even in the course's infancy. Lines to the baskets will eventually become more defined as this course is expected to get a lot of play. Park workers are involved in making the course better for all levels of disc golfers. Will keep this site updated as the course progresses.