All posts by Joe Bissen

About Joe Bissen

Joe Bissen is a Caledonia, Minnesota, native and former golf letter-winner at Winona State University. He is a retired sports copy editor at the Minneapolis Star Tribune and St. Paul Pioneer Press and former sports editor of the Duluth News-Tribune. His writing has appeared in Minnesota Golfer and Mpls.St.Paul magazines. He lives in South St. Paul, MN. Joe's award-winning first book, "Fore! Gone. Minnesota's Lost Golf Courses 1897-1999," was released in December 2013, and a follow-up, "More! Gone. Minnesota's Lost Golf Courses, Part II" was released in July 2020. The books are most readily available online at Amazon.com or Barnes & Noble (bn.com). He continues to write about lost courses on this website and has uncovered more than 245 of them.

Westwood Hills: Time travel, with photos

Lost golf courses, ,

Westwood Hills graces us again.

Westwood Hills Golf Course, near the northwest corner of St. Louis Park, had a run of nearly 30 years as one of Minnesota’s best (that’s subjective, but I’m going with it) and most popular (also subjective, also going with it) public golf courses. Its rolling, wooded and, OK, sometimes-spongy former grounds now are occupied principally by a nature center, a schoolyard and many homes and streets.

Many years ago, however, hundreds of west-metro public golfers called Westwood Hills home. As did the McNulty family.

James A. McNulty founded Westwood Hills in 1929, hiring prominent golf architect and professional Tom Vardon to design the course. McNulty named it after a neighborhood in western Los Angeles and established it as an immediate neighbor of Minneapolis Golf Club, which lay just to the south and west. McNulty and family members owned and/or operated Westwood Hills Golf Course for three decades, and some even took up residence in the neighborhood.

Jim McNulty, great-grandson of the golf course founder, grew up on Westwood Hills Curve and in the early 2010s e-mailed me a small trove of photos of Westwood Hills Golf Course. A handful spruced up the pages of my first golf book, Fore! Gone. Minnesota’s Lost Golf Courses, 1897-1999 (it’s a great Father’s Day gift idea, and should you have an inclination to buy it, please buy directly from Amazon rather than a third-party seller). The more I found out about Westwood Hills — visited by the likes of Patty Berg, Joe Louis, Les Bolstad and thousands more — the more smitten I became. It remains my favorite Minnesota lost golf course among the 228 I have identified.

Last month, my e-mail inbox was graced again by a message from Jim McNulty. He forwarded a dozen “new” old photos of Westwood Hills. He has graciously allowed me to share them, so here we go.

I am interspersing the photos with passages about Westwood Hills from Minneapolis newspapers. The sum total is not intended to be a definitive club history, but  there are some interesting nuggets.

The photos do not correspond with the text entries or the dates on them. I believe most are from the 1950s.

To Jim McNulty, continued thanks.

The Westwood Hills clubhouse sat on high ground near the corner of what is now Westwood Hills Drive and W. 18th Street. Jim McNulty said the views were impressive, and the subsequent photos will show the vistas and the golf course’s rolling terrain.

 1929

Minneapolis Star, June 28: “The Westwood Hills Country club will be opened tomorrow afternoon with Ray and Ronnie Espinosa playing Frank Smeed, course manager, and Ernest Penfold of the Minneapolis Golf club. The exhibition will start at 2 p.m. The course will be open for play after the match.”

Star advertisement, July 12:

PLAY GOLF at Westwood Hills

18-hole championship course

Natural hazards and terrain admirably suited to sporty golf. Creeping bent grass greens. A nine-hole pitch shot course for practicing approaching and putting. Free driving range.

15 minutes from Loop

How to get there — First turn to left after passing U.S. Fox Farm on Superior Boulevard. Two and one-half miles west on Cedar Lake Road.

For Reservations – Call Orchard 9080

1930

Minneapolis Tribune, May 7: “Par on the Westwood Hills fee golf course has been increased from 71 to 72, following enlargement and improvement of the links. … Hole No. 13 now has a water hazard. Hole No. 14 has been lengthened from 420 yards to 575, and is now a par five instead of par four.”

1934

Star, April 13: “Next Sunday will be a gala day at Westwood Hills golf club when the next nine holes, completing a 27-hole layout, will be inaugurated and Lester Bolstad will make his formal debut as a professional. … Westwood Hills is the only course in this section that has 27 holes in its layout.”

Tribune, April 29: The Tribune’s Chandler Forman detailed the new nine holes, which were mixed with some old ones. Thirteen new holes were created, six of them on the old second nine. “The course is laid out over many acres of beautiful and rolling terrain,” Forman wrote.

Highlights:

“No. 20, 355-yard par 4 – This was constructed from the old thirteenth, and beautified by filling the lake in front of the tee with water. One of the strongest holes on the course, with a high hill to carry, as well as the water hazard.”

“No. 22, 540-yard par 5 — A double dogleg and the feature hole of the course. Very narrow tree-lined fairway. White birches, pines, oak and huge elms.”

“No. 24, 380-yard par 4 — An ideal type of hole, tough for a low handicap player and fairly simple for the dub. A good golfer can take a chance and cut over trees at elbow, while the dub has an easy route around.”

Star, Sept. 13: “Les Bolstad, club professional, established a new course record on the first and third nines of the 27-hole layout at Westwood Hills Golf club Tuesday, putting together a 33 and a 34 for for a 67 to be four under par figures. He was playing with Bob Meyers of Interlachen.”

1939

Tribune, May 6: “Patty Berg, Minneapolis’ little uncanny wizard of the fairways, hung up another women’s golf record Friday when she toured Westwood Hills in 73 strokes, only one over men’s par. Patty moved over from Interlachen with her father, H.L. Berg, Lee Lockwood and Marsh Nelson, to practice at Westwood for her exhibition golf week match there next Tuesday with Gunnard Johnson, Bea Barrett and Bill Kaiser of Louisville.

“(Berg) finished with a sensational four on the long par five eighteenth, which would be par six for women as it’s nearly 550 yards in length. The women’s national champion laid an iron shot three feet from the cup for an easy four.”

Berg termed Westwood Hills “really remarkably good for a public course.”

Star-Journal, Aug. 13: The newspaper reported that total yardage on the 27 holes was 9,405, and that 100 men were members. “The women’s group, organized in 1936 with 20 members, now limits its membership to 65 and has a constant waiting list.

“Lester Bolstad, then pro at the club, helped the women organize. He and Gunner (sic; it was Gunnard) Johnson, the present pro, have developed both this group and the Ladies’ Tuesday Evening Group …”

In this photo, the Minneapolis skyline can be seen on the horizon. 

1943

Tribune, June 1: “Over 450 golfers played Westwood Hills Monday as Russ Welch, Len Peterson and Charles Vrooman won 36-hole Memorial Day medal play prizes.”

Morning Tribune, May 1: A small ad served this notice: “In respectful memory of John C. McNulty, Westwood Hills Golf Course will not be open today.”

John and James McNulty were in the grain business and co-owners of Westwood Hills GC. James, listed at this time as “still owner” of WH by the Star, died in March 1945 in Glendale, Calif.

1946

A March 3 Tribune story noted that “three residential additions are being platted, one taking nine holes from Westwood Hills golf course for 150 lots, the homes to be sold in the $12,000 to $15,000 class.”

By 1946, the course was advertised as 18 holes, but an October 1947 Star story noted that construction had started with an intent “to open three nines next spring.”

1947

Star, March 22: ” ‘Please,’ moaned Pat Johnson, ‘tell ’em to stop ringing my phone.’

“Manager of the Westwood Hills golf course, Johnson has been swamped with telephone calls since The Star reported Thursday that Westwood might become a private club this summer.

“Every golfer in town wants to join, apparently.

“But Johnson said today that no decision will be made on whether the club will be public, private or semi-private until the matter of an estate is settled. … Westwood might remain a public course anyway, because the club did well financially a year ago, and R.J. McGuire, present owner, contemplates no change.”

On June 20, 1947, McGuire took out a classified ad advertising his stone rambler. “Sacrifice for quick sale,” the ad read in part.

I confess I hadn’t heard of McGuire before this, but I believe Robert McNulty and John McNulty became Westwood Hills’ owners shortly after this ad appeared.

1949

Star, April 8: “Westwood Hills golf course was open today … on 12 holes of its 18 holes.”

The note was intended simply to say early-season conditions kept the course from being fully open, but it serves notice that WH was an 18-holer by then.

1950

Star, July 11: “John McNulty probably doesn’t know it, but he’s growing lettuce on his Westwood Hills golf course. Owner McNulty just opened three new holes on the first nine. But these fairways were used as farmland during the war, and despite the reconditioning job, an occasional lettuce leaf peeks up through the sod.”

Stories have been told about golfers getting lost while playing at Westwood Hills and straying onto the adjacent, private grounds of Minneapolis Golf Club. And vice versa. On Aug. 23, 1950, the Morning Tribune, in coverage of the U.S. Amateur being played at MGC, wrote: “Two women golfers apparently got lost as they were playing Westwood Hills, which adjoins Minneapolis Golf club. Carrying their golf bags, they wandered up to the 10th green. But they must have decided they didn’t care to play before a huge gallery, because they turned and went back to Westwood.”

1953

Tribune, July 26: “Ole Williamson set a new course record Saturday at Westwood Hills golf course.

“Williamson scored a 66 on rounds of 32-34, a new standard for the layout since it was changed a few years ago.”

On July 12, a Tribune story on Bolstad, the former pro at Westwood Hills and now a legendary figure in Minnesota golf, led with a recollection from Herman Berg Sr., father of future LPGA legend Patty Berg, taking his young daughter to Westwood Hills to work on her short game and practice out of sand. “She already had a swing,” Bolstad said.

 
1954

A Star story in April suggested co-owner John McNulty (with brother Bob) would be listening more seriously to offers to purchase the course, citing the tax burden. The course consisted of 18 holes, and a 16-tee lighted driving range was being built.

Westwood Hills’ practice green was distinctive. Situated just to the east of the clubhouse, it was surrounded by a hedge.

A 1937 aerial photo, taken from the University of Minnesota’s John Borchert Map Library, shows the hedged practice green as a lightly shaded rectangle near the bottom right corner, with the clubhouse alongside to the left (west). Holes on Westwood Hills fan out in different directions, notably to the west and slightly north, on what is now Westwood Hills Nature Center. Also visible are some greens on Minneapolis Golf Club, as well as the clubhouse, in the bottom-left corner of the photo.

1956

The Tribune noted in June that a new green fee schedule had been set: $1.60 for 18 holes weekday, $1.90 Saturday-Sunday.

1957

Westwood Hills and the city of St. Louis Park are in negotiations to sell all or part of the 27-hole course. Play continued through the season, with a plan to divide the land among a nine-hole municipal course, a park site and residential development.

1961

Tribune, June 2: “Westwood Hills golfers watched curiously while a band of ducks casually waddled across the fifth fairway.”

That is the last mention of Westwood Hills as an operating golf course that I know of. Sixty years later, at least one green site is still visible, hidden among trees and brush in the Westwood Hills Nature Center.

As the saying goes, Westwood Hills Golf Course had a good run.

Tom Bendelow: Appleseeds sprinkled about Minnesota

Golf history

The early evolution of Minnesota golf, starting in the mid-1890s and continuing through the next four decades, is owed to more than a half-dozen groups: players, investors, instructors, city planners, club professionals, greenskeepers and even curiosity seekers.

And one more, as important as any other: golf course architects.

Minnesota was fortunate to have had skilled architects walk its land in those days, some as residents of the state (albeit transplants) and some as for-hire creators within state borders. By my estimation, nine such men were especially influential. More or less in chronological order: Robert Foulis, William Watson, William Clark, Tom Vardon, Donald Ross, Ben Knight, Seth Raynor and A.W. Tillinghast.

Wait, that’s only eight. The ninth?

Tom Bendelow. One of nine, yet one of a kind.

Bendelow’s body of work can be reasonably summarized in two words: One, copious, and two, underappreciated.

Bendelow was credited with laying out close to 700 golf courses, according to a flier forwarded to me by Bendelow historian Stuart Bendelow, who is Tom Bendelow’s grandson. That makes him the most prolific golf architect of all time worldwide, probably by a significant margin.

Stuart Bendelow’s research resulted in his appropriately titled book “Thomas ‘Tom’ Bendelow, The Johnny Appleseed of American Golf,” published in 2006. It is a thorough, well-written biography that describes not only the architect but the golf environment of the late 1800s and early 1900s in which he worked.

In prior decades, some of Bendelow’s designs were brushed off as “eighteen stakes on a Sunday afternoon.” (Never mind, wrote Geoff Cornish and Ron Whitten in “Architects of Golf,” that Bendelow was deeply religious and never worked or played golf on Sundays, never drank alcohol, never swore and never told off-color jokes.) That criticism is heard less these days, both with the writing of Stuart Bendelow’s book and with the recognition that designing 700 golf courses, whether they be enduring classics or “sporty” nine-holers – that was said to be Tom Bendelow’s favorite one-word course description – was no walk after walk after walk in the park.

Much of Bendelow’s work came with him employed by the A.G. Spalding Co. of Chicago. “When Bendelow joined A.G. Spalding & Bros.” Stuart Bendelow wrote, “his (and A.G.’s) objective was to promote the game of golf … by increasing the number of golf courses. They were not seeking to design and build championship courses or courses to test the honed skills of the best players, but rather courses that new players could enjoy, courses that would improve player proficiency, courses that would promote player participation, and courses that could be maintained at a reasonable expense. Ideally, he felt that municipal or public golf courses should be like public ball fields, open to all players at little or no cost. …

“It would be fair,” Stuart Bendelow continued later, “to call Bendelow’s approach to course design a ‘naturalist’s approach,’ in that he strove to utilize the natural features of the course to maximum advantage.”

Tom Bendelow’s most noted work was Medinah No. 3 in suburban Chicago (1928). He designed 118 courses in Illinois, according to a list assembled by Stuart Bendelow, and branched out in all directions, including north to Wisconsin for 39 and northwest to Minnesota for somewhere between eight and 12.

The Bendelow-designed Minnesota courses on Stuart Bendelow’s list raise questions about some details, including course names and contributions to particular projects, i.e. was he a sole designer? Collaborator? Redesigner? Overseer of an expansion? Contributor? That isn’t intended as a diminishing of Stuart Bendelow’s book, which includes many such notations and meticulously documented sources. The issue, rather, is that assembling source material on century-old golf courses can be incomplete, inaccurate or hopelessly labyrinthine. (That’s speaking from experience.)

In any event, these are the Minnesota golf courses cited by Stuart Bendelow as Tom Bendelow designs: Northland Country Club, Duluth, 1912; Edina CC, 1915; Lafayette Club, 1915; Minneapolis Golf Club, 1916; Minnetonka Country Club, 1916; Golden Valley CC, 1916; Detroit Country Club, Detroit Lakes, 1917; CC of Minneapolis, 1919; Mankato Golf Club, 1921.

Just to add or elaborate, based on other accounts:

— Tom Bendelow likely advised on Northland’s expansion to 18 holes.

— The Minneapolis GC and Golden Valley CC references likely refer to the same course. The grounds in Golden Valley were originally named Minneapolis Golf Club; most of that club’s membership moved to St. Louis Park in 1916, and Bendelow then laid out a nine-holer (1916) and then 18-holer (1918) in Golden Valley, later overhauled by A.W. Tillinghast.

— I’m uncertain about the reference to CC of Minneapolis, which Stuart Bendelow attributes to “Golf Courses by the American Park Builders” in 1926. It might have been to Minikahda, where earlier Tom Bendelow oversaw improvements to an expansion of that course to 18 holes, according to Minnesota golf historian Rick Shefchik’s book “From Fields to Fairways.”

— Bendelow also designed or contributed to the design of Winona Country Club (now called Bridges, established in 1920), Alexandria Country Club and Interlaken in Fairmont. Some accounts credit Winona CC solely to Knight, but I suspect Bendelow was at least as vital to the original design as Knight, the first professional at Winona CC. (Watson also is credited in some accounts.)

Bendelow’s most prominent design in Minnesota was Minnetonka Country Club, a course I covered at some length in my book “More! Gone. Minnesota’s Lost Golf Courses, Part 2,” released in July. Though I can’t say I ever played the course, which closed permanently in 2014, I gather from a handful who have played it that its design and features largely reflected what was written earlier here about Bendelow.

Design map of Minnetonka Country Club at its inception in 1916. Courtesy of former Minnetonka CC pro Bob Olds.

“The cultivation and expansion of the rudimentary layouts he planned was up to the club he was visiting,” the late Bob Labbance, a member of the U.S. Golf Association museum and library committee, once wrote. “If they installed hazards, developed greens and expended the length of the course as playing talent improved, his work would live on for decades. If not, at least they had a foundation to appreciate the game.”

I had a pleasant conversation with Stuart Bendelow early this year regarding his grandfather’s work at Minnetonka and other Minnesota sites. A couple of months ago, he forwarded documents with more information on his famed grandfather. Among the highlights:

— Tom Bendelow, born in Aberdeen, Scotland, in 1868, grew up playing the Aberdeen Kings Links and was a typesetter before moving to America in 1892.

— He redesigned Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx and was its first superintendent.

— He opened America’s first indoor golf school in New York City in 1895-96.

— He “laid out 150 golf courses in the past eighteen months,” the Fort Wayne (Ind.) News reported. By 1915, that number had increased to 500.

— He lectured on golf course design and construction at the University of Illinois, prompting the university to include golf course design into its landscape architecture curriculum, the first in the United States.

Bendelow’s other design credits and accomplishments as a U.S. golf pioneer are ample. Wrote Stuart Bendelow: “Tom Bendelow’s efforts were preeminent in the founding and growth of golf as a popular sport among the greater population in America.”

 

Caledonia Golf Club: The city’s first of four

Lost golf courses,

Time for a belated thank-you note. Very belated.

Ninety-four years belated.

Thank you, Martin Rosaaen.

For much of his life, Martin T. Rosaaen farmed 80 acres in Houston County, Minnesota, alongside State Highway 44, a mile and change north of the city of Caledonia. It’s unknown whether he ever struck a golf ball sideways or otherwise with a hickory-shafted niblick, but he is a notable figure in the development of the game in the southeastern corner of the state.

Which merits a thank you from me because, well, Caledonia is my hometown, the place where I not only learned to strike golf balls sideways and otherwise but also learned a bit about the history of the game — even if the concept of a lost golf course was foreign to me until many years after Martin’s passing.

Rosaaen’s connection to golf is more coincidental than direct, but it was upon his rolling farmland that play began at Caledonia Golf Club, established Aug. 12, 1926. The Rosaaen plot was the first of four upon which golfers from Caledonia and a half-dozen other nearby cities have spent some of their down time in the past near-century.

When I started researching Minnesota’s lost golf courses in earnest in 2012, I was told about the lost course on the Anna Bowers farm at the southwestern corner of town that lasted from 1926-41. (Though I wrote it that way in “Fore! Gone,” it appears a correction is in order, as the Rosaaen course preceded the course on the Bowers land.) I learned soon after that of the lost course on the Peter Koenig property near the northwestern corner of the city that existed only in 1949 and maybe part of the 1950 season. And I had been told by my uncle, the recently deceased Bob Schwartzhoff, that there had been another lost course, north of town “on the Beranek farm.” I never have figured out where the Beranek farm was, even after checking many historical plat maps and asking a few locals.

I still don’t know if there was a Beranek farm, and if so where it was, but I recently came across a newspaper clip that confirmed a lost course north of town.

Enter Martin Rosaaen.

The Winona Daily News of Aug. 13, 1926, reported on the establishment of Caledonia Golf Club, relating that “at least 50 members are expected to join the organization as well as a considerable number of Spring Grove people.” (Spring Grove is the next city west of Caledonia.) “… The location of the course has not been fully decided upon,” the Daily News reported.

The previous day’s Daily News had offered slightly more detail, saying the course would be nine holes and the proposed location “has been pronounced very fine by Arthur Bakken, La Crosse golf professional.” (His name was Arthur Bakkum, but whatever.)

A La Crosse Tribune story from July 21, 1927, confirms the location of the new course.

“Caledonia finally has secured a golf course after a struggle of over a year,” the newspaper reported. “… To Martin Rosaaen living north of Caledonia the golf bugs of Caledonia owe their appreciation for what they have to play on. Martin has a nice pasture and for a year or more has given his permission to those who want to knock a ball around to go to it to their hearts content. While there is not much to the course as yet it is a start and the wise birds say that is all that is needed to get a real club and course going.”

The wise birds had it half right. The course on Rosaaen’s farm got going, but it didn’t last long.

Two newspaper stories from 1927 reported that the Rosaaen farm had been put into play for golf that season — and plans were in place for something even better the next year.

“Work has progressed rapidly in the Caledonia golf course during the past week,” the Daily News reported on May 3, 1928. “Sunday saw quite a large crowd of fans at the newly improved course which is about one mile north of town on Highway No. 44.

“A gravel driveway now leads into the grounds and ample parking space is provided. The course is nine holes with natural hazards to make any golfer use all his skill. One hole is 500 yards long.”

A Tribune story from February 1928 also noted impending improvements to the Rosaaen course, including the elimination of  — horrors! — crossing fairways.

Rough outline of the Martin Rosaaen farm, 1937 photo, John Borchert Map Library, University of Minnesota. This aerial photo is a decade removed from Caledonia Golf Club occupying part of this site. Rosaaen and his wife, Emma, had since moved to Caledonia, and the property at this time was owned by Leonard Wohlers, who was married to Rosaaen’s daughter Emelia. The intersection near the top of the photo is Minnesota Highway 44 and Houston County Road 10, also known as Angus Drive. I’m not positive Rosaaen’s farm extended this far south.

But as the 1929 golf season approached, plans had changed. “Caledonia Starts New Golf Course,” read a headline in the Winona Daily News of April 27, 1929.

“The Caledonia Golf club has concluded negotiations for a ten-year lease of the Bowers farm from Mrs. Anna Bowers, and now arrangements are under way to convert this tract into a golf course. …

“Playing will continue on the old course until the new course is completed.”

The Rosaaen land appears to have been used by Caledonia golfers during the 1929 season and at least part of 1930. The Winona Daily News reported on April 1, 1930, that the club’s lease with Rosaaen was to expire on May 1 but that, until the Bowers plot was golf-ready, the Rosaaen course would be “kept in shape so that local golfers may limber up. Greens and fairways at the old location are in fair condition.”

The Bowers farm course was laid out by La Crosse Country Club professional Ted Smith and the aforementioned Bakkum, who judging by other newspaper stories was employed by the La Crosse club but likely wasn’t its head professional. Smith, a native of Australia, was an accomplished player, once shooting a 63 at La Crosse CC, and later became the pro at Somerset Hills Country Club in Bernardsville, N.J.

Caledonia Golf Club, 1937 photo, from John Borchert Map Library, University of Minnesota. Fairways are clearly visible. This course was near the southwestern corner of the Caledonia city limits. The road at the top of the photo is Houston County Highway 12, also (I believe this is right) known as Old 44.

The course on the Bowers farm had a nice run, operating until 1941. The short-lived Koenig farm course, designed by Winona Country Club pro Ben Knight, came next, and on Sept. 4, 1961, a grand opening ceremony was held at Ma Cal Grove Country Club, one mile north of town. That nine-hole course, still operating, was designed by Willie Kidd, the head pro at the famed Interlachen Country Club in Edina, Minn., and later a Minnesota Golf Hall of Fame inductee.

What became of the Rosaaen property? Honestly, it probably served better as agricultural land than as a golf course. In the early 1930s, it passed from Martin Rosaaen (who died in 1950) to Leonard Wohlers, husband of Rosaaen’s daughter Emelia. The Wohlerses owned the land into at least the 1970s, according to plat maps, and among the post-golfing animals that roamed their property were turkeys and Tennessee Walking Horses.

The property is now host of a house owned by Joe Welch, who owns and operates a heavy-equipment company in Caledonia. He is a member of Ma Cal Grove and — this is one of my favorite tidbits of Minnesota lost-course history — owns, in addition to the old Martin Rosaaen farm, the old Anna Bowers farm.

Everett Point, Tower: The rabbit hole turns north

Lost golf courses,

Searching for the possibility of a lost golf course in the next county over, I wound up six counties up and 206 miles away.

That’s a heck of a rabbit hole.

I’ll get back to that nearby lost course someday, if there actually is one. But I thought I’d pass along what I found when I started digging — for the first time since  More! Gone. was published a few weeks ago — for lost golf course No. 227 in Minnesota. (I’ll find it sooner or later.)

Flipping through, in a virtual-reality sense, the pages of old Minnesota newspapers, I came upon a short story on the lost Everett Point golf course near Tower. “Lake Vermilion has a new golf course,” read a headline in the Minneapolis Sunday Tribune of July 24, 1927.

“A new nine-hole course, known as the Everett Point golf course, has been officially opened at Lake Vermilion,” the story began. “A short road connecting highway No. 77 with the course was recently completed.”

I have written about the Everett Point course before. It was covered, in a manner of speaking, with four paragraphs near the end of my 2014 lost-course book, Fore! Gone. Minnesota’s Lost Golf Courses, 1897-1999.  The entry noted a 1926 Moorhead Daily News story that said the course would be “five miles from Tower by boat” and that greens fees would be $1.

Coming across the course again this week rekindled my interest. First, I tracked down a 1940 aerial photo of what must certainly have been the golf-course property, appearing in light gray (everything else is trees, road or water):

Here is a wider view of the area, again in 1940. Downtown Tower is about 4.5 miles southeast of the center of Everett Bay. You should be able to click on either photo for a zoomed-in view.

Aerial photos from digital files of John Borchert Map Library, University of Minnesota.

Zooming in on the top photo, I see no signs — whether greens or obvious fairway routings — that the golf course remained in operation in 1940. That makes me twice a liar, because in early references on my lost-course map, I credited the course with a life span of 1921-40. In reality, I suspect it was much shorter.

That covers about half the rabbit hole. Thing is, once I get started, it’s hard to stop myself. I learned more about the Everett Point golf course.

“The course has grass greens, and the yardage is 2,862,” the 1927 Tribune story continued. “The seventh and eighth fairways, especially, are difficult. In time it will be increased to 18 holes. It is owned by Brude Realty Co. of Virginia, but is open to the public.”

Looking at the 1940 aerial, it doesn’t appear that enough land had been cleared to accommodate an 18-hole course. I’m guessing plans were to clear almost the entirety of Everett Point and use it as a golf grounds.

To that end, a story from the Minneapolis Morning Tribune of May 11, 1928:

“Everett Point Links Will Be Expanded,” read the headline. The story reported that five fairways ran parallel to water and that golfers were never out of sight of Lake Vermilion. “The course will be expanded to 18 holes within a year or two,” the story continued.

“James Hunt of Minneapolis, golf course architect and manager of the Country club course in Minneapolis, is a director of the Everett Point club and is supervising the improvements. Earl M. Barrows of Minneapolis will supervise the reconstruction of the greens, the present sod to be replaced by Washington bent grass. Harold Riddle of Minneapolis was professional last year.”

Further burrowing into the rabbit hole required. …

It’s clear there was a concerted effort by parties with Twin Cities connections to make the Everett Point course work. And there were typos in the Tribune story (not throwing shade here. I confess I’ve generated a typo or seven hundred in my newspaper days.).

The aforementioned James Hunt likely was James A. Hunter, original designer of the Country Club (now Edina Country Club), Superior Golf Club (now Brookview) and the lost course at Princeton on the Rum River, to name three. Earle Barrows was a key figure in the development of Bloomington Golf Club (now Minnesota Valley), and he designed Crow River Golf Club in Hutchinson. Hunter and Barrows combined to design one of my favorite lost courses, the Hilltop Public Links course in Columbia Heights.

Everett Point was a par-35 course, according to a 2017 Ely Timberjay story. No. 8 likely was the “signature hole,” decades before that term could be coined and recoined ad nauseam. “No. 8 hole,” the Tribune reported, “a 140 yard shot, is considered by experts to give the average golfer something to think about. This short hole is laid around a cove. A shot across the cove and over the tops of trees on the far side of the cove will land the ball on the green in one. The cautious lad, who has an eye on his ball bag, will shoot around the short dog leg. Par is three.”

Shades of No. 16 at Cypress Point, North Star State style, if you ask me.

Riddle was another Everett Point figure with Twin Cities connections. I didn’t piece together his entire golf résumé, but among the entries of this remarkably itinerant — one might say rabbit-like in the way he hopped around — professional were these: amateur playing out of the Country Club, 1925; Everett Point pro, 1927; Grand Rapids pro, 1928; Hilltop, 1929 and ’30; unattached pro competitor, 1933; Gall’s (now Manitou Ridge) in White Bear Lake, 1934; unattached again, 1935; and then to Watertown Golf Club (now Prairie Winds) in South Dakota in 1937 for what appears to have been a longer stint.

Back to Everett Point: I don’t think the course lasted much past 1930. I found one reference to it in a 1930 newspaper article but nothing after that. It does, however, have a successor of sorts. I reported in “Fore! Gone.” of speculation that some of the Everett Point golf course land lay on what is now the acclaimed Wilderness at Fortune Bay course on the Bois Forte Band of Chippewa Reservation. But that could not have been the case, as the lost course lay entirely north of Everett Bay and the current Fortune Bay course is south of it.

Just one more thing, in case you inexplicably ignored the link near the top of this post and have failed to make the purchase: My second lost-course book is out. It is titled “More! Gone. Minnesota’s Lost Golf Courses, Part II,” and features more than 30 lost courses that weren’t covered in “Fore! Gone.” including rollicking tales from Pine City and Luverne, a tight squeeze near Winona and a historic course near Lake Minnetonka. It’s available here, on Amazon.com.

Now available: “More! Gone.”

Golf history, Lost golf courses,

So many more lost golf courses, so many more stories to tell.

So why not? I decided to tell a few more, with quotes like this, one of many regarding a  colorful gentleman who put up a nine-hole course, designed by a Minnesota Golf Hall of Famer, on his ranch-slash-farm-slash-racecourse in Pine County:

“He drove a 16- cylinder Cadillac … big as a railroad train.”

My second lost-course book, “More! Gone. Minnesota’s Lost Golf Courses, Part II,” is finished and on its way to Amazon’s website via its KDP publishing platform. (If you’re interested in self-publishing, KDP is a great venue for it.)

I’m expecting Amazon to activate a link to “More! Gone.” by the end of the weekend, or maybe earlier. I’ll publish that link here as soon as it’s available.

UPDATE, July 16: The book is now available for ordering on Amazon. Here is the link:

More! Gone. is available here.

An Amazon link to my first lost-course book, “Fore! Gone. Minnesota’s Lost Golf Courses, 1897-1999,” is below, and below that, a list of cities and towns with lost courses covered in the second book.

Order Fore! Gone. here.

Cities with courses in “More! Gone.”:

Ada

Albert Lea

Cass Lake

Cold Spring

Deephaven

Donehower / Dakota

Fergus Falls

Foley

Foreston

Hastings

Hinckley

Lakeville

Luverne

Madelia

Marshall

Milaca

Minneapolis

Oakdale

Pokegama Township, Pine County

Pine City

Princeton

Red Lake Falls

Richmond

Rochester

Rush City

St. Augusta

St. Cloud

St. Joseph

St. Paul

Sauk Rapids

Shorewood

Twin Valley

Winona

And one outlier.