Another lost routing: Hilltop, Columbia Heights

Lost golf courses, Twin Cities metro

Months after Antlers Park Golf Links in Lakeville introduced itself in 1925 as one of Minnesota’s first publicly owned, daily-fee golf courses, a venue at the opposite end of the Twin Cities metro followed suit with an introduction of its own.

It came with considerable fanfare. The Minneapolis Journal of May 30, 1926, did the honors.

“The new Hilltop Golf Links is Minneapolis’ latest test for its public golfers,” the newspaper reported in a short description of Hilltop Public Golf Links, an 18-hole layout under development in the northeastern quarter of Columbia Heights. Hilltop, a short article on the golf course reported, was to be “situated at Forty-fifth avenue northeast, forming a horseshoe around the (Minneapolis) filtration plant.” The story said the course would play to a par of 71, would have grass greens and would be ready for play by Aug. 1.

The Hilltop course was owned by M.J. Lamberton and designed by James A. Hunter, a golf architect of considerable repute — his designs also included The Country Club (now known as Edina Country Club).

The amount of newspaper space given to Hilltop’s development was astounding: a short story, a six-column-wide photo of the course under construction, and a six-column-wide illustration of the routing, including bunkering, doglegs and a water hazard that required crossing off the 16th tee.

Those familiar with the area today might be captivated by taking a “98-year-old tour” of the Hilltop links, starting on lower ground at 45th Avenue Northeast and Chatham Road (near the “Hill-top” headline), rising and turning left at a 90-degree angle at what is now Fairway Drive Northeast, continuing west across part of the grounds of Columbia Heights elementary and high schools, turning north and then rising east alongside the southern boundary of what is now Kordiak Park, meeting its eastern boundary at what is now Stinson Avenue, then sweeping back down toward the clubhouse, with views of downtown Minneapolis (less obstructed then than now) six miles to the southwest.

The photo was spectacular in its own right, frankly because it was so unspectacular. Allow that newspaper photography and production certainly was not what it is today, and that the course was still months away from being a finished product, but the photo still makes Hilltop-in-waiting look like something off the scrub prairie of Kansas or Nebraska.

Hilltop Public Golf Links is one of my four or five favorite Minnesota lost golf courses, given the history, the topography, and the rich details afforded to me a decade ago by the late Mike Rak, one of a handful of ace golfers (along with names like Latawiec, Lakotas and Ulrich) who plied the grounds until Hilltop closed for residential development in 1946. My first lost-course book, “Fore! Gone.” includes a substantial chapter on Hilltop.

Altogether, I find the place, and the Journal’s introduction of it, spectacular.

Two lost routes: First, Antlers Park

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Puzzle pieces are all that remain of many of Minnesota’s lost golf courses.

But sometimes, even when pieces are missing, one finds a tidy little frame to hold things together.

A couple of weeks ago, I came across one old newspaper ad and one story that featured graphics showing the routing of two lost courses I wrote about in my first book, “Fore! Gone.” The courses were Antlers Park Golf Links (1925-38) in Lakeville and Hilltop Public Golf Links (1926-46) in Columbia Heights.

The newspaper items don’t offer much “new” information beyond what I wrote a decade ago, but I had never seen the Antlers Park routing displayed this clearly, and the Hilltop item is interesting on multiple fronts.

First courses first …

Antlers Park Golf Links was part of the highly popular Antlers Amusement Park, alongside the southeastern shore of Lake Marion in southern Lakeville. The ad shown here was published in the Minneapolis Tribune of June 28, 1925. The course’s first tournament was held two weeks later. The first hole headed west, the second returned east, and the rest of the nine roughly went out-and-back to the west, then back to the clubhouse, along what is now Kenwood Trail. The last hole was the longest, a par 5 of 380 yards (yes, par 5, 380). The open area in the bottom-left portion of the diagram would have been Lake Marion.

Though some available information is contradictory, it is almost certain Antlers Park was expanded to 18 holes in the 1930s. A former land owner told me there were notions — they likely never materialized — to add still nine more holes.

The Tribune ad states the course’s yardage as 2,500. A formal 18-hole scorecard from the 1920s states the yardages as 2,310 for the first nine and 2,190 for the second nine, for a total of 4,500.

Antlers Park Golf Links, Lakeville, 1925-38

Below is an aerial photo of the Antlers Park grounds from 1938, presumably from the golf course’s final year of existence. The road at the bottom of the photo is what is now 202nd Street Northwest. The prominent diagonal highway is Kenwood Trail, which was the northern and eastern border of the golf grounds. Part of the grounds today is Antlers Park Beach; most of it is residential development on the north side.

Many of the hole routings and greens are easily seen in this aerial photo.

Image from University of Minnesota’s John Borchert Map Library.

Antlers Park was one of Minnesota’s first privately owned, daily-fee courses, perhaps preceded only by Orono Public Golf Course in 1924. (I believe a club in northern Minnesota makes a similar claim, though the club’s history that I own suggests otherwise, and some Brainerd Lakes-area courses also might say the same.)

I’ll address the Hilltop Links next.

Tree trouble and townball: Naeseth Country Club, Wanamingo

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There are three “schools” of golf course design: strategic, heroic and penal. Let’s skip the first two. Why? Because.

Penal design, to paraphrase the website Fried Egg Golf, means there’s a lot of stuff that can get in the way of your ball. Fried Egg defines penal design this way: “There is a right way to play a hole. Hit the required shots, which are typically straight down the middle, and get rewarded. Errant shots are punished proportionate to the degree of err.”

Visitors to Adolph Naeseth’s golf course discovered that the hard way.

Naeseth (pronounced Nesseth) established a tree-lined golf course in 1925 on his farm in Wanamingo Township, Goodhue County, about 25 miles northwest of Rochester. Michelle Knutson, member of a prominent golfing family in nearby Zumbrota, in 2007 posted to Ancestry.com a recollection titled “A little history of golf in Zumbrota.” Nearby Naeseth Country Club was included.

“He made his own course,” Knutson wrote of Naeseth. “It was a piece of land that had been used for pasture. There were many trees between holes 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. Holes 1, 8 and 9 were open.”

1938 aerial view of presumed grounds of Naeseth Country Club. The course, which lay halfway between the tiny towns of Hader and Aspelund, likely had shut down a few years earlier. The diagonal highway is Goodhue County 8, and 97th Avenue borders the course on the west. Hole routings are easy to envision among the open areas, and a handful of sand greens – small, round, white circles – are visible. Photo via University of Minnesota’s John Borchert Map Library.
Photo at top of post: Adolph Naeseth, left. Courtesy of Gary Bakko.

In May 1926, golfers from Zumbrota, Lake City Golf Club and Naeseth CC met in Lake City for a competition. The hosts won, the Wanamingo Progress reported (no score was mentioned). Two months later, the Lake City club visited Naeseth’s property and, apparently not ready for penal prime time, played pinball among the hardwoods and was drubbed this time, 36-11 by the Naeseth club. Only six Lake City players out of 17 broke 100 over 18 holes. Naeseth shot the day’s low score, an 86.

The Progress declared the heavily wooded Naeseth course a “mental hazard” for the Lake City group and said it “proved a heavy handicap.” Months earlier, the Progress had called Naeseth CC “a tricky course to play.”

That September, Naeseth won his club championship, defeating someone the Progress identified only as “Dr. Knutson” (presumably Dr. Alfred Knutson of Zumbrota, member of the aforementioned golfing family) with a “record game” of 77-77–154. The Progress congratulated Naeseth for his skill “at the close of his third year of play.”

Well done, for sure, especially for a relative beginner. But it was by far not not the first time Naeseth had starred in an athletic endeavor.

In basketball, Naeseth was a standout at Luther College in Decorah, Iowa. He still shares the Luther school record for most field goals in a game, with 16 in 1907.

And in baseball, his achievements were legendary.

At Luther, Naeseth built pitching credentials that would land him in the school’s athletic hall of fame. In eight games against major college competition, according to his hall of fame profile, he won four times, lost twice and tied twice. Victories came over Minnesota, Wisconsin and Nebraska (twice). He struck out 21 batters in one 15-inning game and, as a senior, struck out three batters in the ninth inning with the bases loaded and no outs to secure a 1-0 victory over Wisconsin.

After graduation, Naeseth returned home to the family farm — his father, Ole K. Naeseth, had been a Minnesota state senator and representative — and played town baseball. One account lists him as having been signed by the St. Paul Saints but having his professional career cut short by an arm injury. An October 1922 entry in the Minneapolis Star noted Naeseth, pitching for Zumbrota, throwing a 12-inning no-hitter with 17 strikeouts and no walks in a game against Lake City.

“Naeseth has been offered a contract with the Chicago White Sox, but his parents have objected,” the Star reported.

In June 1934, Naeseth returned to the pitcher’s mound for the first time in more than a decade and, according to the Progress, “demonstrated that he has lost none of his cunning and little, if any of the control which elevated him to rank among semi-professional pitchers in a glorious and never-to-be-forgotten past.” Translation: He was an ace again. He had just pitched a five-hitter with 18 strikeouts in a Wanamingo victory. That August, in Wanamingo’s 14-9 victory over Hammond to clinch the River Valley League championship, Naeseth struck out 15 batters, running his strikeout total to 126 in 11 games.

He was 48 years old.

At his golf course, play continued into the 1930s, and not much longer. By 1927, Naeseth Country Club had taken on a new identity as Wanamingo Country Club. Newspaper stories mentioning the golf course became more scarce — the last one I could find was a July 1933 Redwood Falls Chronicle tale about a Minneapolis golfer losing his ball in a tree on the fourth hole, then on his second nine pumping another shot into the same tree, dislodging both balls.

Teeing off at Naeseth Country Club, 1928. Wanamingo resident Gary Bakko
says this is the only known photo of the course.

Gary Bakko, who lives in Wanamingo and has chronicled some of the history of the city and area, was acquainted as a child with Naeseth. The Great Depression, Bakko presumed in a telephone interview, was the “death knell” for Wanamingo Country Club.

Adolph Naeseth died in 1965.

Notes

  • Naeseth’s daughter, Barbara, was listed as “golf champion of Goodhue County, 1931” in a 1956 family history written by Gerhard Brandt Naeseth, a well-known librarian and geneaologist and for whom a geneaological center and library at the University of Wisconsin is named.
  • In August 1926, the golfers of Naeseth Country Club traveled to Lakeville for a match against another club that is now long gone and largely unremembered. The Naeseth club lost by one stroke to Antlers Park. Naeseth was the medalist with an 81 and won three golf balls, according to the Wanamingo Progress.
  • The first president of Naeseth CC was H.E. Hanson of Zumbrota, elected in April 1925. Naeseth headed the rules and regulations committee and greens committee.
  • Naeseth CC is lost course No. 249 on my list of documented lost golf courses in Minnesota. Any numbering represents basically only the order in which I came upon the courses. No. 250 and more are surely out there. Drop me a note and tell me about another. Cheers. To view the lost-course map, go here: Minnesota lost course map

Wells Golf Club: Lost courses No. 247 and 248

Lost golf courses, Southern Minnesota

Here are a couple of fun facts, borrowed from a city website, about Wells, a city of 2,300 in south-central Minnesota:

“In 1897, the Council requested all saloon keepers remove tables and chairs from bar rooms and prohibit all card playing in saloons. They also requested closing the saloons on Sundays. That same year, according to City Ordinance, ‘all dogs must be muzzled from July 1 thru Sept 1 or it becomes Marshall Stearns duty to shoot them.’ ” 

I suppose those facts don’t quite qualify as “fun.” Especially the one about dogs, woof. Nor do they have anything to do with golf. But there you have it, late 19th-century life in Wells.

All right, there had to be more to life in Wells than mugs and mutts. But enough frivolity. About golf in Wells:

The city’s current course is Wells Municipal Golf Club, a nine-hole, executive-style layout with four par fours and five par threes. “It has been a proud member of the Wells community since 1934,” the city’s website says. The course is accompanied by nearby recreational facilities — a baseball and softball field, and city swimming pool — at Thompson Park. A racetrack once was a prominent feature of the park. No word on whether the galloping hosses were muzzled.

Before 1934, however, there was at least one, and probably two, golf courses in Wells or nearby. Both are now lost courses, Nos. 247 and 248 on my list/database of documented Minnesota lost golf courses (you can Google “lost golf course map” to find the full complement).

I don’t know the full history of golf in Wells, but a fair amount of research, especially via the Wells Mirror newspaper archives on Newspapers.com, reveals what may be a reasonable sketch of its history …

… which starts in 1921.

“Nineteen golf fans and hope-to-be golf fans met on Fridey (sic) and organized the Wells Golf Club,” the Mirror reported on June 23, 1921. The club capped its membership at 60. C.B. Holly (more often identified as Holley on the Internet) was elected club president, and Dr. F.E. Best vice president.

No site for the golf course was selected, though “the grounds committee has several places in view. … Local enthusiasts have been playing the game on a small course laid out in the southwestern part of town.”

The Forum-Advocate of Wells reported on July 14, 1921, that the club had moved its grounds from the “Behrens farm to the Dr. P.F. Holm place which is occupied by Harry Weaver and located a mile and a half east of town.” The Behrens farm site, the Mirror reported a day earlier, “was found not suitable.”

This is where it gets confusing for me. I checked Faribault County and Wells-area plat maps from 1920 and 1925, and see plots owned by both Behrens and Holm, but they are not in places that coincide with what’s reported as golf course sites. I’ll go ahead and blame my poor map-reading skills for not precisely identifying the lost courses. If someone is able to clarify, I’m all Internet ears.

On July 27, 1921, the Mirror reported that Wells Golf Club had increased its membership from 60 to 75. “The links will be further improved to the extent of the money in the treasury. The grass will be mowed and if possible the greens put in better condition.”

Also, “The game has proven so popular that early in the evening the 7-hole course is already at times very much crowded, so eventually it seems that it will be necessary to have a 9-hole course.”

But then newspaper references to the club faded for a few years. The Mirror of March 12, 1931, confirmed that the course had closed. Three months earlier, it was reported an indoor miniature golf course had been opened on Broadway in Wells, an 18-hole course formerly occupied by the Motor Inn Company. The walls were painted “attractively with a desert scene, cactus and sage brush predominating in plant life.” The greens were covered in “goat grass.”

Golf — the real thing — returned to Wells in 1934, judging by the city’s website, or perhaps in 1935, judging by Wells Mirror stories. The April 25, 1935, edition of the Mirror reported on a new golf course at Wells Park, a six-holer laid out east of the grandstand by Jack Gallett, Albert Lea pro. The story expressed hope the course could be expanded to nine holes and a clubhouse could be built. Work was being done by the the State Emergency Relief Administrations (SERA) program, established in 1933 to mitigate poor economic and work conditions caused by the Great Depression.

“The addition of the course,” the Mirror reported, “gives Wells one of the finest parks in Southern Minnesota.”

A 1935 story suggested the course had been expanded to nine holes. Play continued through 1954, according to research, but then appeared to cease again until 1960. The club was reactivated again, and a May 1962 story in the Evening Tribune of Albert Lea detailed expansion plans, including installation of grass greens and building of a new clubhouse.

I believe that is essentially also the current state of what now is Wells Municipal Golf Club and its 2,044-yard design.

Photo with this post shows the site of Wells Golf Club in 1938. Photo is taken from the database of the University of Minnesota’s John Borchert Map Library.

Island courses: Photo gallery

Lost golf courses, Twin Cities metro, Twin Cities metro, , , ,

Elsewhere on this site, you can find my post on two long-lost Minnesota island golf courses, Coney Isle Golf Course in Waconia and Circle Island Golf Course in Rice County (Faribault/Northfield area). This post features some photos that I didn’t post in that story. I’ll apologize for not making this digitally more attractive, but that is beyond my current technological pay grade, which is to say zero.

CONEY ISLE

Left to right, top to bottom: The boat ride to Coney Island of the West on Lake Waconia; tall trees line the paths in Lake Waconia Regional Park; an old foundation, probably of a cottage; 1938 aerial photo shows partial view of Coney Island of the West – golf course area would have been at the far right (gleaned from University of Minnesota’s John Borchert Map Library); shore landing near the site of the old Coney Island Golf Course; (two photos) open area where the course was staged; plat drawing of Coney Island in its earlier days (provided by Carver County Historical Society); nearby Island View Golf Club; (last photo) it seemed to me no road trip to the island would be complete without a visit to Waconia’s Dairy Queen, and a quick lunch featuring, yes, a coney.

CIRCLE ISLAND

Left to right, top to bottom: Old publicity flier, presumably issued close to the course’s 1924 opening; closer look includes residential plot numbers plus, in the open area, designations of tee and green locations on the golf course; another publicity flier; 1926 ad; 1938 aerial photo, via Borchert Map Library; one modern day view – this turtle was basking in the autumn sun near the eastern shore of Circle Lake. Seems it would have stood little chance of securing a tee time after a swim to the island, because, well, you know, turtles would have been notorious for — don’t wait for it — slow play.

Flier images courtesy of Rice County Historical Society. Modern-day photos by Joe Bissen.