Pinehurst Resort and Spa: Health resort for patients until… May 18, 2017 The history of Pinehurst began in 1895, when Bostonian James Walker Tufts, wealthy owner of the American Soda Fountain Company, purchased 5,800 acres of ravaged timberland in the sand- hills of central North Carolina. This land once held a flourishing pine forest that had been cut and deforested for its turpentine and building supplies. Tufts originally developed Pinehurst as a health resort for patients recovering from tuberculosis. After much of the construction had been completed, Tufts learned that tuberculosis was contagious and was forced to turn his new community into a leisure resort instead.