This is not the first time rumors have spread about the looming end of Fitzsimons Golf Course. But the almost centenarian course appears to finally be nearing its close.

While neither officials with Aurora Golf nor the Fitzsimons Redevelopment Authority would confirm a date, the golf course is expected to shutter by the end of the year.

There are no immediate development plans for the property, but the area is zoned for multi-use construction, and development could tie into the adjacent University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus.

Locals have been predicting Fitzsimons’ closure for 22 years, said Lyle Artz, Fitzsimons Redevelopment Authority site manager. The course’s proximity to the medical campus, growing age and long-standing bioscience zoning has it tee’d up for development.

The perennially pushed-back closure date hasn’t gone unnoticed by the staff at Fitzsimons, including Dan O’Shaughnessy, who worked as the course’s head pro from 2001 to January.

“When I came here in 2001, I was told probably 3-5 years I would be here,” O’Shaughnessy said with a laugh. “Well, 16 years later!”

The golf course has, in a way, lived a dynamic life of its own. It started as a 3-hole course in 1918 adjoining then-named General Hospital No. 21, a tuberculosis treatment campus. As the hospital expanded in the late 1930s and early 1940s, thanks to an investment of Public Works Administration and Works Progress Administration funds totaling more than $4 million, the golf course went through its own growth spurt.

By 1941, it had a full 18 holes and elm trees thickly outlining a course dotted with several white, gazebo-like shelters. The later-renamed Fitzsimons Army Medical Center flourished during World War II and beyond, and so did the Fitzsimons Golf Course. President Dwight D. Eisenhower famously grew fond of the course while recovering from a heart attack at the hospital in 1955.

But, piece by piece, Fitzsimons began to lose its shine. Years ago, an outbreak of Dutch elm disease knocked out 2,500 of the stately trees, clearing the course. It’s hard now to imagine how lush it once was, but in certain spots the remaining small groves give a glimpse of past grandeur.

“In its heyday, it was a very tree-lined, very tight golf course,” O’Shaughnessy said.

In 1996, the aging army hospital changed hands, and it has evolved into today’s Anschutz Medical Campus. The clock began ticking for the Fitzsimons Golf Course in 1998, when the property opened for public use. For decades it had been an exclusive club. Suddenly, the city of Aurora managed Fitzsimons, while the redevelopment authority owned the land.

Longtime golfers recall one of the beloved fixtures of the course — a family of foxes. Their den was nearby, and for years, they were regulars on the manicured course. An illustration of a fox became a part of the Fitzsimons logo.

“They were just a part of the course,” O’Shaughnessy said.

But in 2005, that too changed, when crews digging up an old medical waste dump removed the den. The foxes left.

Holes shrunk as construction encroached, going from par fives to par threes. Last year, zoning changed from bioscience to multi-use as the medical campus evolved. O’Shaughnessy and all of Fitzsimons waited at the ready — they would only have a 90-day notice from the Fitzsimons Redevelopment Authority if and when the time came.

“It’s kind of just gone away slowly,” O’Shaughnessy said. “Now when it’s gone, that’s when it’s gonna be so emotional.”

Once standing as far east as the city could stretch, the Fitzsimons Golf Course is now pinched between fingers of civilization. The UC Anschutz Medical Campus cradles the course to the south and to the east Interstate 225 winds through Aurora. The light rail cuts a clean line off the top of the course’s north edge.

That light rail was the cause of one of the course’s many close calls over the past two decades. The city originally planned to lay the rail line down Montview. The train would’ve cut right through the golf course. For his first couple years on the job, O’Shaughnessy operated under the assumption that 2005 would be Fizsimons’ final year.

“Every year we were in watch,” he said.

But then a study revealed the rumbles and movement of the light rail would negatively impact hospital equipment, so the rail line was pushed to the course’s northern end. A sewer project that would’ve gutted the land underneath holes three and four was delayed. Another break.

The golf course remains steadily busy. About 200 people play the course each day in season, O’Shaughnessy said. The mornings are generally filled with military retirees, and the afternoons with students and medical workers.

Closure will remove one of the most affordable and accessible golf courses in the area. It will end a nearly 100-year history. And it will close a sort of second home for many old timers.

O’Shaughnessy believes that about 90 percent of the military retirees he used to see regularly on the course have died. The dynamic of the course has shifted without them. In a way, the multiple breaks the Fitzsimons Golf Course endured were merciful not just to the property, but also to its most devoted players.

“And so that’s what I always thought, ‘What are they going to do? They come five days a week,'” O’Shaughnessy said. “It’s integral to their lives. It would’ve been terrible then.”

The camaraderie many regulars carried over from their military service was the first thing O’Shaughnessy noticed when he started at Fitzsimons in 2001. They would come as often as five days a week, and when they made the rare call that it was too cold or snowy to play, they’d stay inside and make small bets over cards instead. A memorial wall on the exterior of the clubhouse honors those regulars with small brass plaques, some already worn and spotty from the elements.

Paul Bancroft is one of the remaining longtime golfers. The 79-year old joined the club in 1981, after 20 years in the Marines. He still comes to Fitzsimons every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. That familial closeness is one his favorite things about the course.

“One of the really interesting things about Fitzsimons is, even though you may not have known many people there when you first started, you could always go out there and people would say, ‘Hey you wanna play with us? Come on.'” Bancroft recalled

He’s familiar with the golf course’s loss. In January 2011, two of his friends died, followed by a third member of his group just four months later. Putting their three plaques on the memorial wall helped comfort Bancroft.

“It’s a strange thing, when you play golf with people for 20 years, and all of the sudden in a six-month period they’re gone,” Bancroft said.

O’Shaughnessy has found himself in a similar comforting role. When consoling old timers about the looming end of Fitzsimons, he looks to the future.