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.