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.
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After organized golf on the Rum River got off the ground in 1928 with the founding of Princeton Golf Club, the game quickly forged upstream.
The next stop was up the Rum’s West Branch to Foreston, about 15 miles north of Princeton. There, and coincidentally within shouting distance of Highway 23, where a handful of other lost courses in the St. Cloud area lie, was a course that lived a meteoric existence — popular but short-lived.
Mille Lacs County Golf Club (Minnesota lost course No. 200, yes, 200!) opened on May 5, 1929, according to the Mille Lacs County Times. The course consisted of nine holes on the riverbank, “a beautiful stretch of 52 acres, with sand greens, sand boxes, and benches at each tree.” About 25 people played the course on Opening Day, and the club had 25 members, with inaugural officers from the cities of Milaca, Princeton, Foley and Foreston.
The club also boasted, according to the newspaper, the services of “a nine-foot lawn mower.”
The golf course was designed by Paul Schmanda, St. Cloud Country Club professional and a player of some repute, having played in the first two St. Paul Opens, in 1930 and ’31, at Keller Golf Course.
As the club’s name and roll of officers implied, Mille Lacs County GC appeared to have been more of a regional hub for golf than a single-community golf course, especially since the 1930 population of Foreston was a mere 280. One of the club’s first tournaments was staged in late August 1929, with players from Milaca, Princeton, Onamia, Foley and Foreston entered, according to a Mille Lacs County Times story. Scores ranged from an 80 posted by M.L. Ward, superintendent of schools at Foley, to a 103 by Elias Johnson of Onamia.
“The Foreston course is but four months old,” the story read, “and most of the players have taken up golf since that time, several playing their first game but a few days prior to the tournament.”
Mille Lacs County Times photo published with a Jim Pearson column, a remembrance of the Mille Lacs County Golf Club course at Foreston. Courtesy of Mille Lacs County Historical Society.
A January 1930 story in the St. Cloud Times included a variation on a ubiquitous theme among Minnesota’s lost golf courses, boasting that the club “has one of the most attractive golf links in the state.”
In July 1930, a Mille Lacs County Golf Association was held, with a $1 entry fee. The 34 entrants were from Milaca, Foley, Princeton and Foreston. Ward won again, with an 86. Bob Hall of Princeton won a long-driving contest with a smite of 231 yards.
“Just before the long drive (contest),” the St. Cloud Times reported, ” ‘Pro’ Brokel of Armours course, Minneapolis, who has been at the course for a few days, gave a few exhibition drives and the average of his drives was about 280 yards each.”
“Brokel” presumably was Frank Brokl, a Minneapolis pro and the 1929 Minnesota State Amateur champion. Brokl also specialized in designing small-town courses across Minnesota, South Dakota and Iowa, including now-lost courses at Luverne, Lake Benton and Ivanhoe.
Perhaps one source of the popularity of the Foreston course had to do with economics, especially in the early years of the Great Depression. The course offered free golf on Wednesdays, according to a June 1930 St. Cloud Times story, and might have offered an expanded version of free golf by the time the following Times story was published on Sept. 3, 1930.
“Free Golf Near Milaca No More,” the headline read. “The offer of free golf on the course of the Mille Lacs County Golf club near Foreston has been withdrawn because the grounds are in such demand that the club membership must be taken care of first. … With the popularity of the game continuings (sic) here it leaves the golf club with only a few remaining memberships.”
The year 1931 arrived with a similarly bright outlook. “Foreston Golf Course Popular,” headlined a St. Cloud Times story from April 14.
“Dozens of golf enthusiasts are paying tribute in the fine weather and the excellent course maintained again this year near Foreston by the Mille Lacs County Golf association. The course, opened there this week, is the mecca of all who have the time to play.
“A caretaker has been employed this year to keep the course in condition. The greens will be enlarged and the playing should be much better than last season. …”
The Foreston course hosted a five-county tournament in September 1931, featuring players from Mille Lacs, Benton, Kanabec, Sherburne and Pine counties.
Yet something fateful occurred in the following months. Though the Mille Lacs County Times reported in April 1932 of a golf association meeting and added that “the course will be improved,” there is no record that I could find of golf being played on the Foreston course in 1932. Later that year, a course in nearby Milaca was opened, and the Mille Lacs County Golf Club presumably was a memory.
BUT WHERE?
As with the second iteration of Princeton Golf Club, the Mille Lacs course at Foreston mounted a determined effort to hide its exact along-the-Rum location from me (or maybe I just wanted to concede defeat too easily). I had found a 1930 newspaper reference to the course lying “on Highway 23 near Foreston” but came up dry on other repeated attempts to find the place. A 1939 aerial photo, the earliest available online, offered nothing definitive.
Not long after that, the Mille Lacs County Historical Society informed me that the course was in Milo Township, at the northwest corner of Section 3. That helped, and placed the golf course’s resting place just less than a mile east of downtown Foreston. A visit to the city in early July 2018 produced a suggestion from a city employee that the course was near the city’s water reservoirs. A short drive east got me within probably a few hundred yards of the old sand greens, but not definitively on the site.
I received a phone call the next week from Bob Hjort, a Foreston native now living in Duluth. Hjort’s father, William, once owned the land on which the golf course lay. A 1975 plat map shows 49 acres of land owned by William Hjort east of Foreston and meeting the Rum River at its northeastern tip.
Somewhere in that area rests the “mecca for all” and, for me, the 200th identified lost golf course in Minnesota.
The Rum River, western branch, just south of Minnesota 23 and east of the city of Foreston. This view is from a bridge at the eastern end of Main Street and likely is close to where the Mille Lacs County Golf Club lay.1939 aerial photo of land just east of Foreston, Minn. Minnesota 23 is the highway that runs diagonally across the top-left portion of the photo; West Branch of the Rum River is on the right, and the former site of Mille Lacs County Golf Club likely was near the center of the photo, on or near the Rum. (Photo from University of Minnesota’s John Borchert Map Library.)
Special thanks to Wendy Davis of the Mille Lacs Historical Society for research help. Next: Crossing back over the Rum to the original Milaca Golf Club.
The Rum River will not yield its lost-golf course secrets easily.
There are seven golf courses on or very near the banks of the Rum on its serpentine, 158-mile journey from Mille Lacs Lake in Onamia to the Mississippi River in Anoka.
Roll call: Stones Throw in Milaca, Princeton Golf Course and Rum River Hills in Anoka.
Yes, that’s only three. I can count, OK?
Completed roll call, including lost golf courses: Milaca Golf Club, Mille Lacs Golf Club in Foreston, Princeton Golf Club and Bar L Ranch Club near Isanti.
I visited the first three of those lost courses, all dating to the late 1920s or early 1930s, one day in mid-July. I had come across information on the courses in newspaper archives and with the help of local historical societies, but my day trip up Highway 169 unfortunately provided little clarity and, literally, a lot of the opposite in the form of three forced pull-overs to wait out thunderstorms.
First stop: Princeton, covered in this post. I will get to Foreston and Milaca later as I reach the 200 mark in Minnesota’s lost-golf course roll call.
PRINCETON GOLF CLUB — DOUBLED DOWN
Organized golf in Princeton started not on the Rum River but on a site one mile due west of where the river forks into its East (main) and West branches.
“Princeton Golf Club Is Organized,” read a headline in the June 21, 1928, issue of the Princeton Union. The club had 16 members and 10 who were listed as organizers of the club, with C.L. Torgerson elected the first president. “Most of the members of the club have been playing for the past month at the fair grounds where they have been laying out a course of six holes.”
The article concluded, “If interest in the game continues, next year the club plans to secure a tract of about 30 acres and lay out a larger course.”
For the sake of lost-course accounting, I’m calling this fairgrounds site Princeton Golf Club I, lost course No. 198.
Princeton Golf Club continued to operate at the fairgrounds in 1929, increasing its membership fee by $2 to $5 while considering three potential sites for relocation and expansion — one north of town, one west of the fairgrounds and one southwest of town.
The club adopted articles of incorporation on Nov. 1, 1929, shortly after it had settled on an entirely different site for expansion.
“It seems quite probable,” the Princeton Union reported in October 1929, “that negotiations will be commenced to secure the 40-acre tract owned by Joe Leathers lying east of the Scenic highway and north of the bridge over the East branch of the Rum river. The cost of purchasing this tract and improving it would be approximately $4,000.”
The next spring, the St. Cloud Times reported that the Leathers tract “will be supplemented by 20 acres leased from Charles Umberhofer on the east bank of the river, and will offer golfers here a pleasant diversion during the summer months.” Earlier, the Princeton Union reported that the course would consist of nine holes at 3,032 yards with a par of 34.
This was the genesis of what I’m dubbing Princeton Golf Club II (lost course No. 199). And, 88 years later, this was the start of the Rum twisting me this way and that, daring me — and others — to figure out exactly where PGCII was.
Here is the tale of the serpentine search:
The relocated Princeton Golf Club course, it was reported at its founding, would be mostly on or near the west bank of the Rum. Leathers’ house, which still stands, was just north of the fork in the river, near the west bank, not far from the corner of 5th Avenue North and North 5th Street. And the home of Charles “Umberhofer” — it took some digging just to determine his name actually was Umbehocker, and he had owned a prominent ice-making business on the Rum — was just south of the river’s fork, on the west bank, a site now occupied by the Princeton Community Library and apartment buildings.
My hypothesis at that point was that the golf course had lain just north of the intersection of Minnesota 95 and Rum River Road, near the homes of both Leathers and Umbehocker.
Double bogey.
Umbehocker, I was told by a Princeton native in his 90s, owned multiple plots in and around Princeton. So the golf course wasn’t necessarily near his former home. And the Leathers family, I discovered after hitting repeated dead ends in searching for informative plat maps, owned not one but two adjacent 40-acre plots, stretching from Joseph Leathers’ home north to about 12th Street. Both of those lots included land alongside the Rum, near the area of what is now Pioneer Park.
One or two people I conversed with thought the Princeton Golf Club course started near the current Princeton Middle School. Another, Wendy Davis of Princeton, who contributed immensely to the research on Princeton GC via the Mille Lacs County Historical Society, said her mother believed the golf course was in the area of Pioneer Park.
One newspaper story offered a retro-virtual layout. “The first fairway extends a distance of 485 yards and has been cleared of stumps and the land levelled with a tractor and roller,” the St. Cloud Times reported in April 1930. “The first tee will be on the hill near the city limits. In the stretch of land which as been cleared for this fairway about 100 trees were cut down and the stumps blasted out. The first green is 30 yards west of the river. Near this first green will be the second tee. The third tee will be at the south point of this high ground between a morass and the river. The fairway here, the shortest on the course will extend 170 yards northeast. There are five holes on the west side of the river and four on the east side. Foot bridges will be built to accommodate the players. The Princeton club now has a membership of 29 and 20 others are expected to join before the season is formally opened.”
All such detail provided no certainty. Plat maps and Google searches revealed nothing definitive about Princeton Golf Club’s location. I studied an aerial photo from 1939 until my right eye was my left and my left was my right but still could not positively identify the golf course.
Presumed area of Princeton Golf Course, 1939 aerial photo, University of Minnesota’s John Borchert Map Library. The course likely had shut down about four years earlier, so most of its features aren’t readily apparent (high water on the Rum might have significantly changed the look of the area). The street on the far left is 5th Avenue North, with Pioneer Cemetery at the top-left corner.
Semi-armed with information, I connected with Mike Trunk, who operates a surveying business in Princeton. Trunk once lived near the Princeton maintenance grounds on North 11th Street and had tromped on down to the Rum often as a youth to fish or just explore. He recalled from about 25 years earlier part of a structure near a sharp bend in the river that he thought might have been a footbridge. Was it for the golf course? We didn’t know but suspected it was. So, parking at Princeton Middle School, Trunk and I tromped down to the river again, him smartly wearing above-the-ankle rubber boots and me stupidly wearing shorts and tennis shoes. (I got wet feet but avoided the poison ivy, thanks only to Trunk’s direction.)
There, we found …
… nothing, really, but the Rum, plus high grass and dozens of wooden footings that Trunk speculated had been pounded into the riverbank in recent years to support the ground just below the middle school. He also speculated that remnants of the suspected footbridge might have been removed at the same time.
There was no tangible evidence of a golf course having occupied the land, though we knew it almost certainly did.
The Rum River, just south of Princeton Middle School and possibly part of the former grounds of Princeton Golf Club.
I briefly walked through part of Pioneer Park, again concluding nothing except that the area likely had changed dramatically since the 1930s, the open areas largely filling in with woods and backwater.
The Rum River at Pioneer Park, possibly on or near the former site of Princeton Golf Club.
POST-SEARCH
The Rum still has me hornswoggled. It did not invite me to search further that day, instead summoning partner-in-crime Mother Nature to chase me out of the area with a nasty thunderstorm (shown below, near the Leathers house).
Anybody see the lost golf course? (It’s off to the right somewhere.)
I now concede to the Rum and am willing to offer only a best guess on the exact whereabouts of Princeton Golf Club II:
I believe the first tee was near the northeast corner of the maintenance grounds, and the first hole was a dogleg right that skirted what is now the middle school grounds and finished near the river. I would say the second and third holes also were on the west side of the river. After a river crossing, holes 4, 5, 6 and 7 were on the east side. The eighth was back on the west side, and the ninth ran parallel to the eighth, returning and ending near the first tee. A river crossing on one or two of the holes would have made sense from a golf-design standpoint, but I can’t speculate on candidates for that.
Trunk, I gather, believes the course might have been slightly north of where I judge it to have been. I don’t think either of our theories is more or less valid than the other.
There are other elements of certainty about Princeton Golf Club’s Rum River site. Well, relative certainty.
As the new grounds opened in 1930, E.L. McMillan was club president. The next year brought a new president, Raleigh Herdliska. In April 1932, the Princeton Union reported that a family membership would cost $15, with no one under the age of 12 allowed on the course. Greens fees would be 35 cents, 50 cents for Sundays and holidays. The club manager, W.C. Roos, was enlisted to “remove the danger of lost balls in the right rough at the right of the first fairway.” In May 1932, plans were announced for a tournament to be held.
By 1934, Princeton High School was fielding a golf team, presumably with a hat tip to Princeton GC for having established the game in town. Also in 1934, a shortstop tournament attracted 23 entries. (Update, 2019: Another 1934 story, passed along in late 2018 by Wendy Davis, reported that the golf course had been leased to the village of Princeton for five years.)
Details in a 1935 Princeton Union story contradicted earlier reports, asserting that a course of 1,700 yards was laid out in 1929 and that “700 more yards were added last summer.”
“The links are in a beautiful location,” the story continued, “and the course will undoubtedly in future years become popular. Just as present the links are not in particularly good condition but William Roos who is the manager states he expects to have them ready for the players by July 4.”
Contrary to the story’s speculation, Princeton Golf Club’s grounds likely were soon abandoned. A 1938 Union story reported on a meeting at which it was “decided that an effort should be made to revive the Princeton Golf club. Eight members were in attendance.” F.J. Maroney operated the club and held the lease at that time. (I could not find on plat maps any nearby land owned by Maroney around that time.)
I found no further references to the golf club in 1938 or 1939, leading me to conclude the course remained closed even after the “revival” meeting. Years later, in August 1954, the St. Cloud Times reported on the formal opening of a new course, Rum River Golf Club, on the southeastern side of town and again alongside the river. That layout remains in operation today as Princeton Golf Course.
Postscript: After this post was published, I was apprised of 1937 Union stories reporting that Maroney, “athletic coach of the Princeton school,” had leased the golf course grounds and planned on repairing them and reopening the course after two years of it lying idle. A tournament was played there in June.
ONE LAST PUZZLE
There are conflicting and puzzling reports on the designer of Princeton Golf Club at the Rum River site.
The October 1929 Union story on the club reported that a group including “J.A. Hunter, a professional golf player of Minneapolis, inspected the grounds. Mr. McMillan stated Mr. Hunter thought the tract would make an ideal course.
“Mr. Hunter has considerable experience in laying out golf courses. He is at present working on a course at Nicollet and Lyndale in Minneapolis, and has planned and rearranged several other courses in that city. He agreed to come to Princeton at different times for a nominal consideration to direct the work of laying out the golf course.”
In March 1930, however, the Union reported that Charles J. Mulder would lay out the new course and that Mulder “has laid out some of the finest golf courses in the Twin Cities.”
I have not heard of a Charles Mulder in relation to Minnesota golf. Research turned up a Charles Mulder who lived in nearby Zimmerman, with a suggestion that he had experience in earth-moving. Perhaps Hunter — James A. Hunter, who in 1923 designed the nine-hole Country Club, a layout that would become known as Edina Country Club — handled the Princeton GC routing and other details, while Mulder presided over construction.
As for the reference to Hunter working on a course at “Nicollet and Lyndale,” that is as baffling as anything in this story. Those streets run parallel through Minneapolis, just blocks apart, and there is no current or lost course in that area of the city.
Next: Mille Lacs Golf Club at Foreston, Minnesota lost golf course No. 200.
I could stare at this old golf photo for hours. Well, minutes, for sure, and that’s still saying something.
The image was forwarded to me by Tom Steman, university archivist and professor at St. Cloud State University. He dug this out of the SCSU catacombs or more likely old folders and passed it along to me after the two of us had a long discussion about the likely location of the lost course on the St. Cloud State campus.
The photo is not from the campus course. Steman noted, “We have the print of this image that appeared in a pamphlet/booklet advertising St. Cloud State that dates circa 1919. The published photo appears in a section that shows images from around St. Cloud. The caption simply says ‘Golf Links.’ ”
In all likelihood, this photo is of St. Cloud Country Club, perhaps in its inaugural season of 1919 (and more than a decade after the birth and death of St. Cloud Golf Club), which was not the same place. I have no other information or speculation to offer.
No more words. Take a look and, I hope, enjoy. (You can click on it for a larger view.)
One firm request: The photo is courtesy of the St. Cloud State University Archives and needs to be credited as such if anyone is inclined to share it.
Almost equidistant from Minnesota Highway 23, our asphalt reference point of note for St. Cloud-area lost golf courses, lie two more abandoned layouts, both on sites that you wouldn’t think of as terrific golf-course sites any more than you might think of the Everglades as a terrific site for a NASCAR track.
A college campus, and a fairgrounds. Different cities. Different sides of the highway. Similarly unusual venues.
St. Cloud Teachers College course (lost course No. 196)
The St. Cloud Teachers College golf course began with an elevated first tee atop the steps to the English building, where pedantic professors refused to acknowledge golfers who asked fellow competitors, “What club are you teeing off with?” and instead insisted on “With which club off are you teeing?” The course concluded at the entrance to the philosophy and liberal arts building, where nihilistic professors perused scorecards and pronounced, “You shot a 107, but I’ll give you a 38 because numbers don’t matter and really nothing else does, either.”
Apologies. Just trying to brush up on my fiction writing.
The very first part of that opening paragraph is true, though. There was a Teachers College golf course, across the Mississippi River to the east of the main campus, that maintained a low-key existence for a half-dozen years in the 1930s.
This particular piece of land was not all about golf, however, as noted in the St. Cloud Times of May 2, 1931.
“Acquisition of a six block tract of land in East St. Cloud for use as an athletic field was announced today by President George A. Selke of the State Teachers college. The land lies north of Michigan avenue S. E. starting at a point four blocks east of the end of Tenth street bridge.”
The whole shebang would be known as College Recreation Field, across the Mississippi River from the college’s main campus and one mile south of Minnesota 23. Its most prominent feature would be a new football stadium, but the Times story noted plans to also include a baseball diamond, a running track, tennis and volleyball courts, and — oh, yeah, what are we going to with all of that open land on the north side? …
… “golf course,” the story said.
Novel idea, right? Well, to some extent. But it wasn’t the first campus golf course in the nation. Ohio State, for instance, had one as early as 1919. It wasn’t the first campus course in the state. The University of Minnesota had iterations dating to the 1920s. And the Teachers College course wasn’t even the first in the St. Cloud area. Professors and students alike played the campus course at St. John’s in Collegeville from approximately 1926-33.
From a golf playability standpoint, the Teachers College plot had promise. From an attractiveness standpoint, not so much. “The plot just acquired will require but little in the way of improvements before ready for use,” the Times reported. “The land is literally ‘as flat as a table.’ ”
In conclusion, wrote the Times, “The installation of a small golf course will open the way for new activities at the college. White it is not the aim to open a complete course, several holes will be available for practice and instruction.”
The College Recreation Field was dedicated on June 24, 1931. Its golf course was six holes long and featured sand greens. A.F. Brainard, head of the college’s physical education department, would oversee summer school classes on the course. The golf grounds appeared to have but one adornment, “a pretty group of oak trees, right at the first tee,” the Times reported on June 25. “This is the only clump of trees on the entire property with the exception of a few smaller ones at the extreme south end and the property is ‘level as a table top.’ ”
Selke was said to have struck the ceremonial first shot at the course. He and Brainard were subjects of “moving pictures … that were taken for the school’s permanent records,” the Times reported. However, the college — known today as St. Cloud State University — appears to no longer have any such Selke-Brainard film, according to university archivist Tom Steman.
Steman noted brief references to the golf course in published university material through the mid-1930s. He noted that a college golf team was established in 1932. I could find no evidence that any varsity meets were played at the campus course; old newspaper references mentioned home meets mostly at St. Cloud Country Club or in a couple of cases the public Hillside Golf Course.
Steman speculated that the golf course didn’t last long. “By the fall of 1937,” he wrote in an email, “Selke Field was dedicated (again but as Sports Field) and football and track moved to Selke Field from the Brown Field, which stood just west of Shoemaker Hall on the main campus.”
Update, June 12, 2018: Tom Steman and I have discussed this at length and, ufortunately, cannot determine with certainty exactly where the golf grounds lay. I am concluding with the notion that the course lay to the north of what was in some references strictly considered Recreation Field, marked “G” below.
College Recreation Field and surrounding area, St. Cloud, Minn., 1938 aerial photo from University of Minnesota John Borchert Map Library. G – believed to be golf course grounds; F – football field (with apparent running track adjacent to the east); M – Mississippi River; C – main campus, St. Cloud Teachers College (now St. Cloud State University)
Benton County Golf Course (lost course No. 197)
Published April 1, 1931, in the St. Cloud Times, and not an April Fools’ Day prank:
Three days later, the Times made brief mention of this golf course in a roundup of St. Cloud layouts about to open for the season.
“The Benton County course, situated on the Benton county fair grounds, was opened on Thursday and reports indicate that it will enjoy another successful season. Considerable money has been spent in making this one of the classiest short courses in the community and those in charge report early popularity.”
Like golf on a college campus, golf on a fairgrounds was not a Benton-only notion. A lost golf course on the Roseau County Fairgrounds in the 1930s featured one hole around or over a grandstand. A six-hole course was established in 1928 on the Renville County Fairgrounds.
However, the notion of a golf course on the Benton County Fairgrounds site, one mile north of Highway 23 in Sauk Rapids, apparently was not greeted with universal enthusiasm.
“There seems to be a misunderstanding on the part of many people of this territory,” the St. Cloud Times reported on July 22, 1931, “regarding the Benton County fair, the principal one being that there will be no fair this year.
“There has been no such on the part of the Benton County Agricultural Society. … The idea probably gained belief because of the fact that a golf course has been in operation on the grounds. The golf course is simply a method adopted by the association to utilize the grounds throughout the open season and to create a revenue to assist in conducting the fair.”
Benton County’s fairgrounds golf course also was a six-holer, put into operation in 1930. It covered 1,800 yards, “is clean and sporty and with well-constructed greens and tee-offs,” the Times reported on March 31, 1931. “The short holes are so situated as to allow interesting hazards and, in several instances, are more difficult than the longer ones.”
I found no evidence of the Benton County course in operation beyond 1931, however, and one person I spoke with at the Benton County Historical Society was unaware that such a golf course had ever existed.
If the original concerns about golf taking over fairgrounds were instigated by Mrs. Swenson of Ronneby being concerned that her blue-ribbon crop of petunias were about to be made null and void by a short par 3, maybe, by 1932, petunias had won out over golf course.
Benton County Fairgrounds, 1936 aerial photo from University of Minnesota’s John Borchert Map Library. The assumption is that the Benton County Golf Course that had existed on the fairgrounds site was long gone by 1938, but light circles inside or near the oval track could have been old green sites.
If the city of St. Cloud is the heart of our excursion through Central Minnesota lost-golf course country, state Highway 23 is the aorta — the main artery.
Of the 12 lost courses I know of within 30 miles of St. Cloud, 11 of them lie within six miles of 23, the highway that cuts diagonally through Minnesota and stretches 341 miles from Pipestone to Duluth, at one point bisecting St. Cloud. Two of those lost courses are/were within easy earshot of the highway. You know, close enough so that you could have driven past and done something really hilarious like shouting “Fore!” at the top of your lungs. (Or you could have shouted “Fore! You’ll soon be gone!” That might not have been funny, but it would have been spectacularly prescient.)
I’ll make St. Cloud the starting point for a look at three more lost courses. As before, each course gets a numeric designation as I approach having identified 200 Minnesota lost golf courses.
Springbrook, St. Augusta (established 1930; lost course No. 193)
East of Rockville (and south of St. Cloud) lies the city of St. Augusta. The city’s downtown is at its northeastern corner, next to I-94, but the entirety of the city sprawls across 30 square miles. In the north-central part of the city, not quite a mile north of the St. Augusta Fire Department headquarters and coincidentally the Hidden Lake Disc Golf Course, is a site upon which the targets were not steel baskets but 4 1/4-inch holes in the ground.
“St. Cloud’s first public golf course, Springbrook, will be formally opened next Saturday and Sunday,” the St. Cloud Times reported on April 30, 1930. “The name of the new course implies it’s (sic) natural beauties. A little trout brook meanders through the entire property, necessitating two crossings during the course of a single round. Five pure water springs, giving up nearly ice cold water, are situated so that they are but a short distance from each of the nine holes.
“… Starting from the farm house on the coure (sic), the first hole is directly north, some 400 yards. The second hole requires crossing the brook across a deep gully.”
Further description followed. The course was built on land owned by Charles H. Tanner, who, according to other Times stories, was vice president of Northwestern Oil Company and a St. Cloud Country Club member. Tanner’s wife, Jessie, was mentioned in the Times society pages for doing things like making presentations on India’s caste system. The Tanners lived in St. Cloud and — best guess — probably leased the St. Augusta farm. In the 1930 Times story, it was reported that Mr. and Mrs. Leo Schaefer lived on the farm and would be the golf course caretakers.
Tanner’s farm covered 80 acres at what is now the intersection of County Roads 136 and 115. The farmhouse was on the eastern side of the grounds, with the first hole headed north, as mentioned, probably to the edge of what is now County 115, which took a slightly different path in the 1930s. Tanner’s farm extended south, its likely boundary lying where the northern edge of the Robins Brook Estates development is today.
Tanner enlisted a “Chicago expert” more than a year before the course was established to lay out the course, the Times reported, and “the expert was enthusiastic over the natural possibilities offered by the Tanner farm.” I read this and immediately speculated that the expert might have been Tom Bendelow, a Chicago course architect who designed between 500 and 1,000 U.S. courses and was known as the “Johnny Appleseed of American golf.” But that seems unlikely, because Bendelow had done most of his work well before 1929.
Springbrook (called Spring Brook in some stories) had sand greens, and a picnic area was planned for the grounds. Tanner declined to offer memberships and made course strictly daily-fee. The Schaefers would set up a “refreshment parlor and serve chicken dinners to the golfers and others,” the Times story stated.
Springbrook underwent an uncommon transformation in 1932 with the conversion of sand greens to grass. Most small-town courses in Minnesota in that era featured sand greens because of the relatively prohibitive cost of establishing and maintaining grass greens. The Schaefers apparently were gone by 1932, because the course “Is under new management this year and new patrons are always welcome so long as the rules of the course are observed,” the St. Cloud Times reported on June 4, 1932.
My best guess is that the course didn’t last long past 1932. A real estate transaction in a Times issue suggested that the Tanners sold their farm in 1937, and Charles Tanner died later that year. A 1938 aerial photo of the property offers only vague golf-course forms, suggesting the course had been abandoned years before.
Presumed area of Springbrook Golf Club, 1938 aerial photo, Minnesota DNR Landview Service. The course was on Charles H. Tanner’s farm, which extended slightly south beyond the red borders in the photo. The first hole started just to the north of Tanner’s farmhouse. The highway shown alongside Tanner’s farm on the left (west) is County 136.
Scenic, Cold Spring (1930; lost course No. 194)
Cold Spring has two existing golf courses — River Oaks, just northeast of downtown and established in 1990, and Rich-Spring (1962), southwest of downtown and — natch — adjacent to Highway 23. (“Fore! Not gone! Good job!”)
The one-time existence of a separate, third course just outside the city limits came pretty much as a what-are-you-crazy surprise to a half-dozen Cold Spring residents I talked with.
Cold Spring Golf Club was organized in 1930, and a seven-hole course was organized in Wakefield Township, 1.3 miles northwest of downtown and seven-tenths of a mile northwest of where Rocori High School is today. The course took up a square plot between where today 163rd Avenue turns into 238th street and County Highway 50, though the golf grounds did not reach the highway.
The original club occupied a plot owned by John DeWenter (spelled that by the St. Cloud Times, spelled De Winter on a 1925 plat map). In 1931, the club leased 19 additional acres from Harry Thelen that was used to build two more holes. (Caveat: I can’t unequivocally say this is where the golf course was, as De Winter and Thelen both owned land elsewhere in Wakefield Township, but this was the only place in which the lots abutted, and aerial photographs strongly indicate the one-time existence of a golf course there.)
On April 8, 1931, a St. Cloud Times story indicated that the golf club had appropriated itself with the name “Scenic Golf course.” The Times followed with a grammatical Freudian slip: “The typography of the new land is admirably suited to add snap to the course,” the story read. Ed Honer was hired as course caretaker, and memberships were set at $5 for men and $3 for women and children.
The Cold Spring club faced Albany in a match later in 1931. In 1932, two holes were changed, and several bunkers were added around two greens.
A playing highlight of dubious sorts occurred on May 3, 1936. The Times reported on it the next day. “Ferdinand Peters, president of the Cold Spring Golf club, ‘showed the boys how it was done’ Sunday afternoon when he teed off and his ball struck a swallow. The bird was instantly killed, much to Mr. Peters’ regret, but nevertheless he could not resist the opportunity to ‘Ripley’ the other golfers.”
If the “Ripley” reference escapes you, you must be younger than 50. Google “Ripley’s Believe It Or Not.”
The golf course likely closed down shortly after Peters’ bird-but-not-a-birdie. A 1938 aerial photo of the area suggested that some of the green sites, which usually are distinct on aerials, had softened around their edges, and I could not find any references to Cold Spring Golf club in the 1939 issues of the Cold Spring Record.
Scenic Golf Course (Cold Spring Golf Club), northwest of town, 1938 aerial photo, University of Minnesota John Borchert Map Library. Presumed sand-green sites can be seen on the left side of the photo. The road at the top-right corner is County Highway 50.
Chain O’ Lakes, Richmond (1931; lost course No. 195)
The 1929-31 Stearns County golf boom continued farther west with the establishment of a course in Richmond.
“The Chain O’ Lakes Golf course opened last Sunday to the public and a full nine-hole course is now available to the public. The course is described as one of the finest in this section of the country,” the St. Cloud Times reported on May 15, 1931.
The course was situated just off Highway 23 at the southern edge of Richmond, where Minnesota 22 headed south to Eden Valley. The course underwent a significant overhaul in 1933, with every green “rebuilt entirely,” the Times reported, “being made much larger and constructed so as to respond to the accuracy designable to the best golfers.” It was not mentioned whether the greens were sand or grass, though the overhaul resulted in greens of “various shapes,” which would have been highly unusual for a sand-greens course.
In 1935, Dr. E.M. Reichert was elected club president. Annual membership was $3 for men and $1.50, and a greens fee of 25 cents was set. Fees remained the same at least through 1935, when Alois J. Lang was elected president. The course was described as par-32, with a length of 3,205 yards (that’s a long course for par 32).
The Chain O’ Lakes course’s end date is unknown. Though a file at the Stearns County Museum suggests it was abandoned in 1939, a 1941 Times news story mentioned the golf course as though it still were operating. I was able to track down Richmond-area residents who remembered the existence of the course but couldn’t offer details or say when it might have closed.
Richmond’s Chain O’ Lakes Golf Course, 1938 aerial photo, University of Minnesota’s John Borchert Map Library. The road in the middle of the photo is Minnesoa 23. It intersects with Minnesota 22, heading south to Eden Valley. The golf course is in the bottom portion of the photo. Much of the land is now an oversized water hazard, where East Lake lies in the Horseshoe Chain of Lakes region.
