Hamilton Lakes is a planned community that was established as part of one of the greatest land assemblages in the history of Greensboro.
With the help of his nephew, former North Carolina Governor Alfred Moore (A. M.) Scales, an attorney and land developer began purchasing tracts of land north and west of the city as early as 1900. Together with business partner Alexander Worth McAlister, they began developing the easternmost piece of this land in 1912, under the auspices of the Southern Real Estate Company, into the Irving Park golf course community, which is still in use today.
Scales purchased properties held by established Quaker families, leveraging the success of Irving Park as a springboard.
The Caldwells, Coffins, and Ballingers were among the families who lived along the major thoroughfares in the city’s western outskirts.
By 1922, he had amassed 4,683 acres that stretched from West Market Street and Wendover Avenue on the south and east to Battleground on the north, and from West Market Street and Wendover Avenue on the west. On the west, he also built an extension of Jefferson and New Garden roads. The land he had purchased had been purchased with the intent of developing it into what he envisioned would be a resort-style community to meet the growing demand by medium and upper class inhabitants for large lots in a bucolic and soothing location.
This vision led to the establishment of the Town of Hamilton Lakes, which was incorporated on March 6, 1925, and encompassed 1,600 acres, ten miles (four of which were asphalted with distinctive tan-colored asphalt), water and sewer mains, and a variety of recreational opportunities such as playgrounds and lakes.
Hamilton Lakes built on the promise of a recreational lifestyle that he had established with his previous development, Irving Park, and enlarged on it. Irving Park was home to a country club as well as a golf course. Scales, on the other hand, enlarged the recreational opportunities in Hamilton Lakes to include the community’s tennis courts, bowling greens, wading pools, parks, and gardens, all of which are distributed around the village.
There were two lakes in the community, Lake Euphemia (named after Scales’ mother) and Hamilton Lake, both of which were impounded behind ornate fieldstone dams, which were crucial to the pastoral lifestyle idea of the neighborhood.
The big lakes served as a focal point for the community and set Hamilton Lakes apart from any other neighborhood in the Gate City.