West End Golf Club came about when a course architect named O'Connor designed a course in Miami Florida called Colonial Palms. The golf course is a par 60 and fully lighted, exactly like West End but much smaller. Mr. O'Connor was contracted to design a lighted par 60 course here in Gainesville. The golf course itself sits on about seventy acres. All of the lighting at one time was mounted on palm trees. The first nine holes were built during 1968 and the second nine in 1969.

As the palm trees have died over the past thirty years, the lights have been mounted on poles. Quite a few of the palm trees are still there and you can see where the lights used to be mounted on them. Nowadays, golf courses rarely install lighting as it has become too expensive.