With a name like Money Hill, you know there must be a good story behind it. As it turns out, there are many.
“There are several legends regarding the name,” explained Mimi Goodyear Dossett, the fifth generation of the Goodyear family to manage the 5,600-acre piece of land about an hour’s drive north of New Orleans. “One is that after the War of 1812, the British were still around, and the locals gathered a bunch of gold coins to use to try and convince the French to help. They were robbed, and the robbers buried the money here. But when they came back, all the fallen pine needles had covered everything, and they couldn’t find their treasure.”
Other ideas follow the same theme: from Andrew Jackson and his troops stopping to bury their belongings in the area before fighting in the Battle of New Orleans to the famous Pirate Jean Lafitte stashing his booty amidst the trees.
The tales have emboldened the imagination decades of hopeful treasure seekers.
“When my dad was a little boy in the 1940s, there were still people out here searching,” laughed Dossett.
If you ask the Goodyear family, any of Money Hill’s more than 800 residents, or St. Tammany Parish leaders, however, the real treasure at Money Hill has already been found, and it lies above, not below the grounds.
Life Among the Pines
Money Hill’s rectangular footprint spans roughly the size of Covington, stretching 7 miles from its northern to southern end. Driving north from New Orleans, by the time you reach the pine groves, you feel like you’ve left civilization, even though the community is only 10 miles northeast of Covington and just 7 miles northeast of Abita Springs, sandwiched between highways 21 and 435.
It’s that feeling of being “away from it all” but still within reach of necessary amenities that has fueled the growth of Money Hill as a planned golf community.
In the1990s, Dossett’s father, David Goodyear, hired an architect to create what was considered the No. 1 golf course in Louisiana until Hurricane Katrina, and is still considered a top 10 championship golf course. He also built a 186-acre artesian spring-fed lake — christened Lake Goodyear, of course. The first home at Money Hill was completed in 1999, followed by the country club in 2000.
Over 25 years, the custom home community has been consistently selling off lots, currently priced between about $90,000 and $300,000.
“Our lot sizes average a little under an acre,” said Dossett, who took over management of Money Hill in 2008 and lives in one of the community’s approximately 300 homes. “The sizes are a selling point because it’s very unusual nowadays to be able to find lots that large in St. Tammany.”
Well beyond large lots and great golfing (including the largest lady’s golfing association in Louisiana), Money Hill boasts the typical amenities of many planned communities, including a community pool, fitness center and tennis courts, but it’s the more unique features that have drawn many residents. These include the topography — rolling hills and an elevation that averages 100 feet above sea level (both rare to the region), which Dossett said have helped residents avoid “insurance issues that so many other areas face,” and make Money Hill a “great and very convenient evacuation location” for a second home.
There’s also the fact that the Goodyear family has long been passionate about conservation. Money Hill is buffered from the rest of the world by 3,500 acres of nature preserves, and within its boundaries you’ll find the St. Tammany Parish office of the Louisiana Nature Conservancy, along with a wide array of flora and fauna including more than 200 species of birds such as eagles and great egrets, and adorable critters called Bachman’s squirrels.
The most notable natural feature, however, is Money Hill’s stunning forests of longleaf pine trees, which Money Hill actively replants as part of the community’s conservation efforts. The community also conducts invasive species control, creates protected areas for certain species and installs numerous bluebird and wood duck boxes.
Money Hill encourages residents to join in its work through efforts like collecting used Christmas trees and sinking them into the lake to create habitat for fish. Last year a community recycling center was created to collect cardboard, glass and aluminum, as well as items for donation like clothes and shoes.
With its more remote location, quiet pace and golf-focused amenities, its unsurprising that Money Hill has been popular with retirees, but younger families have also been drawn in.
Karlie and Chris McDougall are the owners of Renew Physical Therapy, which has locations in Covington, Madisonville and Mandeville. The couple bought their first home in Normandy Oaks in Covington, but when two little boys came along, Karlie said they were intrigued by the offerings at Money Hill.
“We wanted them to be able to run around and be boys,” she said. “We just fell in love with all the green spaces and the opportunity for the kids to be able to ride their bikes anywhere they wanted.”
The couple bought a lot in 2016, hired a builder and moved in 2017.
“The first year felt, honestly, like we were really far from things,” said McDougall, “but now there’s so much traffic everywhere except up this way that even though the distance is farther, we get places just as quickly as we did when we lived in Covington. We can get anywhere within 30 minutes.”
The McDougalls’ love for Money Hill eventually spread to Chris’s parents, Elizabeth and Wayne McDougall. Southshore natives, Elizabeth grew up in Arabi, where she served as tourism director for 20 years while Wayne was a prosecutor in the district attorney’s office.
“After we retired, my son said, ‘Why don’t you just move here?’” said Elizabeth. “We now had three grandchildren at Money Hill and my husband is a golfer, so we bought a house around the corner from them during the pandemic.”
Elizabeth said she couldn’t be happier with their decision.
“The kids can now ride their bikes over whenever they want,” she said. “We have dinner together all the time. It’s just perfect — so serene and beautiful.”
She said she enjoys a variety of activities in the community.
“I’m involved in the community garden, I play bridge, I’m in a book club and a lady’s group, and play pickleball,” she said. “It’s like being on vacation, but we live here. Honestly, it’s a lot like when we grew up, where you knew all your neighbors.”
A Giant Step Forward
That ability to know all their neighbors, however, is going to change. As of early May, the community was down to just six available lots, making now the perfect time for an expansion.
This past December, the St. Tammany City Council granted Money Hill the largest zoning approval in the history of the parish, allowing it to expand north and fill in the 4,400 acres of the planned unit development that have long been just forest. Plans currently include adding another 18-hole golf course with restaurants and lodging, along with sports fields, 12 pickleball courts, expanded lakes, an equestrian center and a commercial village.
In January, Money Hill added its first commercial tenant at The Village at Money Hill with the opening of the Our Lady of the Lake Physician Group Money Hill Walk-In Clinic. Located adjacent to the community’s Highway 21 entrance, the 5,034-square-foot-clinic offers traditional primary care and urgent care seven days a week.
“Our next goal is to add a boutique grocery store,” said Dossett. “We’d like to create something and have someone run it. Then we’ll be looking thoughtfully at what else would benefit our residents, maybe a dry cleaner, pharmacy, executive offices, a nail salon, some retail.”
Dossett emphasized, however, that the project is on a 50-year timeline, and that the development will be “measured and careful, with huge respect for the open space.
“The development includes up to 4,400 homes total,” she said. “If we added 50 homes a year — we have been averaging about 20 — to what we have for the next 20 years, that doesn’t even put us halfway.”
Work is already underway, however, to create more lots, the first of which will be available in July.
In addition to larger custom home sites, Money Hill currently has a street called Orchard Row which consists of smaller, attached garden homes that Dossett said have been popular for people looking for an easy, economical option and another collection of eight Club Cottages — two-bedroom units.
“We kept two of the cottages to use for short-term rentals and the other six were sold to people from New Orleans,” she said, “which is great. I’d love to have more weekenders from New Orleans.”
One Piece of Land, Many Lives
Looking around today, it’s hard to imagine Money Hill as anything but a planned golf community, but that’s only been the reality for the last 25 of the almost 120 years the Goodyear family has owned the property.
“The story of St. Tammany Parish is reflected in the history of Money Hill,” said Dossett, whose great-great-grandfather, Charles Waterhouse Goodyear, and great-great uncle, Frank Henry Goodyear, were successful lumbermen in Buffalo, New York. Seeking to expand to the South, the brothers purchased several hundred thousand acres of longleaf pine, including the area known as Money Hill, in 1905. They then proceeded to build the largest lumber mill in the nation, The Great Southern Lumber Company, as well as the town of Bogalusa to serve as home to its workforce. To transport the lumber to the mill and to markets, the brothers also built the New Orleans Great Northern Railroad.
By the 1930s, the pine market was slowing down, and tung oil, also called “Chinese wood oil,” was all the rage. The oil, which comes from the seeds of the tung tree, has been used for thousands of years, especially to make wooden boats water-resistant. Charles Goodyear’s son, Charles Jr., was able to procure some seeds and moved into the tung oil business.
“My great-grandfather was one of the grandfathers of reforestation,” said Dossett.
Her grandfather, Charles III, ran operations for a while and then her father, David, took over until, after 30 very profitable years, disaster struck: in 1969 Hurricane Camille decimated the tung trees. At that point, David — the last president of the American Tung Oil Association — decided to replant the longleaf pine. Over the next decade, he ran Money Hill as a popular family campground.
“We even had wild horses on the property until late into the 1970s,” said Dossett.
To continue to share the land his family loved, David pivoted into a different direction and created a planned golf community, which he ran until his daughter took over in 2008. Dossett said many people, including residents, have fond memories of the property from back when it served as a campground.
“I’d say a good 30% of our residents now came here as children,” she said.
Dossett isn’t the only Goodyear involved in Money Hill today. Her cousin Andrew is the chief financial officer, and another cousin, Charles “Chip” Waterhouse Goodyear IV, serves as chair of the board of directors.
Chip said his earliest memories involve visiting his grandparents at Money Hill in the 1960s.
“We’d go swimming, fishing and boating, back when it was still a timber operation,” he said. “My first job was at Money Hill in 1971 when I was 13. I built picnic tables for the campground before it opened. ”
By the time Money Hill was becoming a golf community, Chip was working as the chief financial officer at Freeport-McMoRan.
When David Goodyear, his uncle, died in 2009, Chip became chair of the board.
The deep family connection to the property, and now community, is what Chip said makes Money Hill different from other developers.
“A typical developer wants to get a property, put as many houses on it as possible, then pay off their loan and move on to the next project,” he said. “We didn’t have to borrow money to buy this land, and it’s been so important to my family, to our history, that we feel strongly about taking something that’s special to us and having it become special to many others.”
Both Chip and Mimi expressed the importance of slow and careful growth that maintains the conservation heart of the property and only serves to further benefit the lives of existing residents.
For Karlie McDougall, the expansion plans bring up mixed feelings.
“I’m excited to see if everything comes true that is supposed to happen,” she said. “The urgent care has already been huge for so many people and another pool and golf course would be great. It’s bittersweet though, because it’s been such a well-kept secret that we’ve been able to have to ourselves. Once those gates close it feels like your own little heaven out here.”
Yes, That Goodyear…Sort of
The Goodyear family responsible for founding Money Hill and the town of Bogalusa are relatives of Charles Goodyear, an American chemist who patented the first vulcanized lumber in 1844. The Goodyear tire company bears his name, but that’s where the connection ends. The company was founded in 1898 by Frank A. Sieberling, who named it in honor of Goodyear, who, despite his important contributions, had died penniless 38 years before.
Other notable Goodyears include:
William Henry Goodyear — (son of the chemist Charles Goodyear) who is best known as the first curator of the Metropolitan Museum of Art
Anson Goodyear — (son of the Charles Goodyear who co-founded Bogalusa and Money Hill) who is best known as the organizer and first president of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. He was also a director at Paramount Pictures.
