The Two Golf Courses In Star Valley Ranch (And The One That Isn't)

Ask three neighbors in Star Valley Ranch how many golf courses come with their community membership, and you may get three different answers. Some will say two. Some will say three, because a quick search turns up a course with nearly the same name a few minutes down the road. Only one of those answers is right, and the confusion says something real about how this community's amenities actually work.

Here is the plain version: Star Valley Ranch residents have access to two golf courses through the Star Valley Ranch Association, and they are not interchangeable. A third course that shares part of the name belongs to someone else entirely.

Two courses, one membership, two different afternoons

Cedar Creek is the course most people picture when they think of golf here. It is an 18-hole, par 73 layout that winds through the community with tree-lined fairways and the kind of mountain views that make you miss a putt because you were looking at the Salt River Range instead of the line. It plays long, it plays scenic, and it is the course you book when you want a full afternoon.

Aspen Hills is a different proposition. It is a 9-hole, par 36 course that backs directly against the Bridger-Teton National Forest, and it has a reputation that extends well past Star Valley. Its 7th fairway, nicknamed the Tunnel Hole, is rated the hardest hole in the entire state of Wyoming. Locals do not play Aspen Hills for the same reason they play Cedar Creek. One is a leisurely round. The other is a challenge you tell people about afterward.

That contrast matters if you are deciding how to spend a Saturday. A short window before dinner favors Aspen Hills, where nine holes and one legitimately hard tee shot fit into an hour or two. A full day with friends favors Cedar Creek. Treating them as the same amenity, just at different lengths, misses what each one is actually for.

The course down the road that isn't yours

Here is where the naming gets genuinely confusing, and where a little local knowledge saves you a wasted search. A separate 18-hole course, sometimes listed online as the Star Valley RV Golf Course, sits at Star Valley Ranch Resort on Muddy String Road in Thayne. It plays to a par of 67 over roughly 4,320 yards, opened in 1982, and charges an estimated $30 for 18 holes. It is open to the public, it is a fine course for what it is, and it has nothing to do with your SVRA membership.

The resort's course is run by the RV resort. Cedar Creek and Aspen Hills are run by the Star Valley Ranch Association for the benefit of SVRA members and their guests. Search engines and directory sites routinely blur the three together because the names overlap, but the ownership and access rules do not. If you are a resident planning to bring visiting family out for a round, knowing which course actually belongs to your community saves a phone call and possibly a green fee you didn't need to pay.

Every round ends at the same clubhouse

Here is the part that shapes daily life more than the scorecards do. Cedar Creek and Aspen Hills feed into a single social hub, not two separate ones. The Cedar Creek Center, completed in the spring of 2020, houses the Cedar Creek Swimming Pool, Duffer's Lounge, Three Canyons Restaurant, and The Grill at Star Valley Ranch. Aspen Hills, for all its difficulty, has no clubhouse of its own. Play the Tunnel Hole and you still end up back at Cedar Creek for food.

Three Canyons Restaurant sits inside that clubhouse at 1800 Cedar Creek Drive, open daily from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m., with a patio that looks out over the golf course. One regular diner summed up the appeal simply: "We sat on the balcony and watched the golfers play the last hole." That is the actual rhythm of a Star Valley Ranch evening. You do not need to have played either course to end up at that table. The clubhouse pulls golfers from both, plus pool members, plus anyone who just wants dinner with a view, into the same room.

That consolidation is worth knowing if you are new to the community or just haven't paid attention to where people actually gather. It is not Cedar Creek's clubhouse and a separate Aspen Hills clubhouse. It is one building doing the work of both, which explains why it can feel busy even on a night when neither course had a full tee sheet.

The free lap most people miss

Tucked into the Aspen Hills grounds is a nine-hole disc golf course, and it operates on a completely different logic than the golf courses next to it. There is no fee. There is no tee time. A typical round takes about an hour and covers roughly 1.1 miles, and discs are available to rent at the clubhouse if you show up without your own. It carries a modest 3.4 out of 5 rating across 28 community reviews on UDisc, which is about right for a casual, no-frills course that isn't trying to be Cedar Creek.

The contrast is the point. Golf here requires booking, green fees, and in Aspen Hills' case, real skill on at least one hole. Disc golf requires walking up. For residents who want fresh air without the logistics, or who are introducing kids to something on the same property where the adults are playing a real round, it is the low-friction option sitting quietly next to the high-friction one.

Governance is part of the routine too

None of this, from the courses to the clubhouse to the free disc golf lap, runs itself. The Star Valley Ranch Association is in the middle of its 2026 election season, with three candidates competing for two open board seats. Those are the people who set policy on everything covered above, from how Cedar Creek Center is staffed to how Aspen Hills gets maintained heading into another season.

It is easy to treat community amenities as fixed features, the way you'd treat a view or a zip code. They are not. They are decisions made by neighbors who ran for a board seat, and the current election cycle is a reminder that the golf courses, the clubhouse, and the pool all answer to people who live here, not to a distant management company. Paying attention to that election is as much a part of living in Star Valley Ranch as knowing which course has the hard hole.

None of this changes what makes the community work day to day. Two real golf courses, one shared clubhouse, one free disc golf lap, and a board election that decides how all of it gets run. That is the actual shape of recreation in Star Valley Ranch, once you sort it from the name confusion online.

If you are weighing a move to Star Valley Ranch, or you already call it home and want a market update grounded in the same local detail, Patty Speakman and the Speakman Realty Group team are a call away.