Feb. 1: Please note, I am leaving this original post from Oct. 26 intact. There is a significant update at the end of the post.
The past two weeks have brought news of one more Minnesota golf course that will close at the end of the 2019 golf season and another that is likely to close.
The former is Hollydale Golf Course of Plymouth; the latter is Willow Creek of Rochester. Both are public layouts.
Below are links to a Hollydale notice and a Willow Creek news story:
The Willow Creek story leaves open the sliver of a possibility that another buyer will come along and keep the course open. If that does not happen, it will bring to 73 the number of Minnesota golf courses that have closed since the year 2000.
Unrelated: In the coming months, I will be republishing a slightly revised, slightly updated edition of “Fore! Gone.” It will be in print-on-demand form. The book has proved to be especially popular as a gift for older golfers. Will let you know about it soon.
Update, Feb. 1: Willow Creek will remain open. New buyers have secured a three-year lease. Here is a link to the Rochester Post Bulletin story:
The original Cass Lake Golf Club served golfers for about than a decade and a half in the 1920s and 1930s, not a bad run during an era in which scores of other small-town courses in Minnesota closed up shop.
At some point, however, the original CLGC situated partly on the Bingham Lodge land between downtown and the shore of Cass Lake ceased to exist, and the game was re-established a mile and a half to the southwest, on the other side of the city, on the site of what is now Sandtrap Golf Course.
But when?
At least two websites say Sandtrap (not its name in the course’s early years) was established in 1944. At least seven others say 1943. One, admittedly more business-oriented than golf-oriented, says 1983.
Not quite, not quite, and what weed from yonder gorse patch are you smoking?
Here is an aerial photo, dated 1939 and taken from the Minnesota DNR’s Landview service:
Yep, it’s a golf course. Modern-day Cass Lake golfers might recognize the lay of the land. It is Sandtrap Golf Course — or at least the 80-year-old version of it — a mile east of downtown. Except the photo dates to 1939, before the consensus purported opening of the course.
Here is what I came up with regarding the very earliest years of what is now Sandtrap Golf Course:
I don’t know whether the original Cass Lake Golf Club, on the Bingham site, flourished or floundered in the 1930s. I came across a few references indicating the course operated into the late 1930s, including a 1937 newspaper ad that said The Bingham still had a golf course adjoining it.
A headline in the Cass Lake Times of July 6, 1939, however, suggested that organized golf in Cass Lake went through a short period of dormancy in the late 1930s. And it pointed toward the future of golf in town.
“Golf Is Revived On New Course,” read the headline.
“The new Cass Lake Golf Course,” the story began, “is now ready for play. Fairways have been cleaned and rolled and sand greens and driving tees are in excellent shape. The new links are located on an eighty-seven acre tract south of the GN wye (railroad intersection, seen at the top of the aerial photo) and overlooking beautiful Partridge Lake.
“Thirty townspeople hold membership in the reorganized golf club.
“The Cass Lake links were first located north of the grade school and across the Soo tracks. Unable to make suitable arrangements with the Dougherty interests for the greater part of the old course that they had been renting, the Club traded ten acres with the bank for the tract near the wye. The bank then sold the ten acres to the School District who will develop a field for various athletic activities. Thirty-six years ago this same field was one of the finest baseball diamonds in the lake region and had a grandstand that held a thousand. It was torn down in about 1913. Adjoining the school yard it make(s an) excellent school athletic field.”
That golf was played at the Sandtrap site earlier than the most-often-cited date of 1943 might be mere historical nitpicking, and Cass Lake is not by any stretch the only Minnesota golf course whose origins go back further than generally credited. The same occurred, for instance, in Marshall and Little Falls and certainly dozens of other Minnesota cities. I’m certain my research and writing isn’t foolproof, either, and that among the hundred-plus lost golf courses I’ve written about, I have gotten dates and history wrong. It’s an imperfect pursuit. Regardless, it seems reasonable to note discrepancies when they lead to a fuller, more accurate history.
The new Cass Lake Golf Club appears to have not roared into the 1940s. A 1940 Cass Lake Times ad mentioned greens fees were 50 cents and that Nick Schluter was club president. A 1941 story notes the same club president, but I found no direct mention of the golf course in operation from that year’s Times editions.
In 1942, golfers from nearby Walker were invited to play at Cass Lake, and vice versa. In May 1943, a headline read, “Cass Lake Golfers Playing Every Day Now,” and “Russell Johnson is putting the links in shape.”
By 1944, hard times were evident. “Town Needs A Golf Course,” blared a front-page Times headline on April 13. A drive for at least 60 members was being conducted by the club’s officers. President N.A. Schluter was quoted as saying, “It is imperative that the town and resort country adjacent, get behind the membership drive, to assure not only a golf course, but one of the best in the country.”
Newspaper stories from later in 1944 confirm that the course did operate that season, but I found no stories mentioning Cass Lake Golf Club in the 1945 editions of the Times.
In 1946, stockholders met early in the season, with Schluter still president. A membership fee of $10 was set, but the status of the course was uncertain. In May 1946, the clubhouse was seriously vandalized. The only other mention of golf in Cass Lake from 1946 was a reference to golfers from town playing in the Birchmont tournament in nearby Bemidji.
In March 1947 came a headline that read “What of Golf?” implying that the club was either dormant or barely alive. Rescue came later that month, with the May 22 Times reporting that the local VFW chapter had taken over management of the course, now called Cass Lake Golf Links. Rollie Schmidt and Cedric Schluter were apparently heading efforts to keep the club operating, and a mixed tournament was set for that June.
I didn’t investigate beyond that date, A) assuming that the golf course survived from that point onward, the start of a five-decade period of stability for Minnesota golf, and B) having set the Hubbs Microfilm Room at the Minnesota History Center record for spooling up rolls of film on a northern Minnesota city. (Yes, that’s sarcasm.) I do know that the course, on the 1939 site, operates today as Sandtrap Golf Course, owned and managed by Gary Larson, who in a brief conversation with me said the course was doing well, thank you.
The Schluters and other Cass Lake Golf Club predecessors would no doubt thank him for keeping the game alive there.
Below: Just FYI, an aerial photo of the golf course from 1976, courtesy of the University of Minnesota’s John Borchert Map Library. Without digging into the more recent history of the course, I can say with 98 percent certainty that it featured sand greens (the bright, white spots) at this time.
Please comment if you have more to add about golf in Cass Lake. Cheers.
The story of golf in the northern Minnesota city of Cass Lake does not start with an attempt to lure the U.S. president to town.
But a story has to start somewhere, so here we go …
On March 11, 1927, Henry George Bingham of St. Paul composed a letter, typewritten on paper carrying the letterhead of the St. Paul office of the Mutual Benefit Life Insurance Company, to M.N. Koll, secretary of the Cass Lake Commercial Club. Bingham, who owned a resort lodge on the western shore of Cass Lake, informed Koll that he had heard President Calvin Coolidge had been invited to spend his summer vacation in northern Minnesota — at the Woodhome Lodge, an hour southeast of Cass Lake on Roosevelt Lake near the city of Outing.
Bingham thought Cass Lake — and The Bingham, as his lodge was known — would be a superior presidential destination. He told Koll so in his letter and implored him to write to Coolidge, inviting him to Cass Lake for the summer.
The next day, Koll composed a letter that would soon be eastbound. Today, a copy of it rests in the archives of the Minnesota History Center. The letter began:
“Subject — Summer White House.
“My dear President:
“The late Edmund L. Pennington, had a summer home here for several years. He was the Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Minneapolis Saint Paul and Sault Ste. Marie Railway when he died about a year ago. It was sold to Mr. H.G. Bingham shortly afterwards by Mr. Pennington’s Estate.
“It is modern. It has very choice equipment. It is half a mile from the village limits. Has telephone, electric lights, $5,000.00 cabin launch suitable for the waters of the lake system here. Has an east frontage, fine bathing beach, stands on a bluff overlooking the lake facing the famous Star Island. Has equipment to care for over thirty guests. Has both separate lodges and sleeping rooms in the main building. Has a golf links adjacent. It is quiet. It is situated among the pines.”
Koll listed more Cass Lake organizations and assets, including the Consolidated Chippewa Indian Agency, and proclaimed that “we can lay claim to a high average of intellectuality in the community.” The sum total of the letter was to invite Coolidge to spend part of his summer at The Bingham.
Off the letter went to Washington, D.C.
Koll received acknowledgement of the letter’s arrival in correspondence dated March 15 and written on White House stationery. The White House’s reply was noncommittal.
But ultimately, no dice. On May 31, the White House formally announced, to great fanfare from Midwestern newspapers of the day, that Coolidge and his travel contingent — including his wife, Grace, and her pet porcupine, Betty — would spend their summer at Custer State Park in the Black Hills of South Dakota.
Cass Lake’s loss, Black Hills’ gain. Henry Bingham, Mathias N. Koll and Cass Lake Golf Club (Minnesota lost course No. 210) went on about their 1927 daily routines, sans the Coolidges and Betty.
In a sporting sense, perhaps it’s just as well. Silent Cal might not have enjoyed himself at Cass Lake Golf Club. “Coolidge played out of obligation and his game reflected it,” Golf Advisor reported in a 2014 story, “as he usually required double-digit shots on each hole.”
Advertisement, unknown newspaper, dated June 4, 1937.
CLUB ORIGINS
Cass Lake Golf Club’s nine-hole, sand-greens course had not yet begun its second season when Bingham and Koll composed their letters. The club was organized in 1925 and opened play on and near Bingham’s property in 1926. (Update, September 2024: I have just come across a Grand Rapids Herald-Review story from June 1923 that reported that Cass Lake was among cities in the area with golf courses. I have no information that confirms or expands on this, so I will leave it for now as originally written.)
“It has long been the desire of the people of Cass Lake Village,” read a Cass Lake Times article in July 1925, “to add to its many other attractions — golf grounds.”
A committee of 10 businessmen was formed to search for such grounds. A.C. Anderson of Hibbing, Minn., described as “a golf expert,” was invited to visit Cass Lake and offer opinions on a suitable tract. The decision was made by the newly formed Cass Lake Amusements Inc. to employ land on the “Sam Fairbanks Allotment,” as the Times put it, “or that part of this allotment that lies between the ‘Boat Landing Road’ the Soo Line railway and Cass Lake.”
“This is a beautiful round, rolling, covered with a vigorous second growth of timber, and having a splendid outlook upon Cass Lake, the several islands, the Minnesota National Forest and practically all of Pike Bay.”
Eat your heart out, Cal. And Betty.
Cass Lake Golf Club’s prehistory began with four holes that lay on the Bingham Lodge property before the club was organized. After the club organized on June 28, 1926, five more holes were built after the acquisition of adjacent land on what the Times referred to as “the Newsome property.”
If all of this is leading to the notion that Henry Bingham was the father of golf in Cass Lake, I’ll just say I don’t think that’s true.
I never found a connection between Bingham and the game of golf. But his predecessor on the lodge property, Pennington, well, that’s a different story.
Edmund Pennington was born in 1848 to an English father and Scottish mother. He rose through the railway ranks to become Soo Line president. In 1910, Pennington County in northwestern Minnesota was named for him. Pennington lived in Minneapolis’ prestigious Lowry Hill neighborhood, and his name is linked in published biographies with names such as Pillsbury and Bovey, both residents of Wayzata’s well-to-do Ferndale neighborhood. (Charles Bovey was a founder of Woodhill Country Club in 1915, and much of the entire Ferndale populace was connected to golf.)
Two other nuggets further connect Pennington to golf: The executor of his estate after his death in 1926 was one Clive T. Jaffray of Minneapolis, a founder of that city’s Minikahda Club and a frequent champion in the early years of Minnesota golf; and a 1923 biography of Pennington lists him as a member of both Minikahda and Duluth’s Northland Country Club.
I would bet a stringer of plump Cass Lake walleye that Pennington built four golf holes on his northern Minnesota estate before dying, after which Bingham became the land owner.
Summertime entries in the Cass Lake Times of 1926 tell of Cass Lake Golf Club’s preparations in building a course. On Sept. 2, 1926, the newspaper reported, “The first casualty on the Cass Lake Golf Links occurred last week, while Mr. and Mrs. C.W. Hough were playing. Mrs. Hough swung on the ball, (Cyril says it was the prettiest shot she has made this year) and Cyril admiring the shot didn’t move fast enough and the ball hit him in the eye, laying his cheek open.”
LOCATION … LOCATION?
If “close” counts only in horseshoes, hand grenades and finding lost golf courses, then I suppose I can take credit, because I can come close to pinpointing the site of the long-abandoned Cass Lake Golf Club.
But I can’t do better than that. If you want me to tell me exactly where the first tee was, or whether it was a long walk from the ninth green back to the clubhouse, not gonna happen.
The following is, I guess, equal parts facts and guesses, likelihoods and unlikelihoods, about Cass Lake Golf Club’s site:
— The Cass Lake Times story from 1925 identified the site as between the “Boat Landing Road,” the Soo Line railway and the city proper. That would be the northeastern part of town, possibly within the current city limits and possibly just outside.
— The Bingham is now Cass Lake Lodge, according to Cass County Museum records. But the boundaries of Bingham’s property — inside of which the four holes of his golf course were placed — are unknown. Best guess is that they were east west or more likely south of his lakeside lodge.
Unfortunately, old aerial photos are of no help. The University of Minnesota’s 1937 database has a gap in Cass County — Murphy’s Law at play here — just at the western edge of Cass Lake and does not show the land between the city and the lake, where the golf course was. Also, available historical plat maps do not directly identify owners of lots in the vicinity.
— Another 1925 story identified the golf course land as being north of the Soo Line railway and east of Boatlanding road. Efforts to identify this road resulted in possible conflicts. I received much-appreciated input from Cass Lake residents and former residents on a Facebook page, mostly leading to the assertion that the current Sailstar Drive is the Boatlanding Road — but a 1927 map of resorts in the area (I can’t publish it because I don’t have rights to it) doesn’t show any roads leading diagonally from the city to the lake, as Sailstar does today. So I still can’t positively identify the path of Boatlanding Road from the 1920s.
— I have no idea where the aforementioned “Sam Fairbanks allotment” was. Nor did any of the handful of people I mentioned it to.
— I did find two newspaper clips that, put together, appear to closely identify the site of the golf course. First, the Cass Lake Times of July 1, 1926, reported on the organization of a golf club, with Walter Minton as its inaugural president.
“Dues were set at $15 and fifty members have already pledged themselves.
“The course consists of the Bingham four hole course, now ready and the Newsome property to be teed up for a nine hole course.
“The club will lease these to properties for the present and the links will be ready for use in a short while.”
But where was the “Newsome property”? I was stuck on that detail until recently discovering a classified ad in the Minneapolis Tribune of April 26, 1926, notifying that the Highland Inn Resort was up for sale and that the land was being held by the Newsome Development Company of Cass Lake.
Today, Highland Park Lodge is about 550 yards southeast of Cass Lake Lodge — formerly the Bingham. It leads me to say my best guess is that the original Cass Lake Golf Club land lay close to those lodges, about a quarter-mile west of the lake, possibly on or near what is now 162nd Street Northwest and 60th Avenue Northwest, or about four blocks north of the Leech Lake Land of Ojibwe Tribal Office. That could be in conflict with the noted proximity to Boatlanding Road, and I can’t resolve that.
UPDATE: COURSE FOUND, I’M PRETTY SURE
Update, July 19, 2019: I have come across a 1939 aerial photo of the area between the city of Cass Lake and the lake itself, which I presume includes the Bingham Lodge. The photo is likely from the season after golf was played at this site, but the features wouldn’t have changed appreciably. I can’t identify all areas with certainty, but I am pretty sure this photo reveals the Cass Lake Golf Club site.
Photo is courtesy of the University of Minnesota’s John Borchert Map Library. I tried to keep markings to a minimum, but here are some guidepoints: B = Bingham Lodge; CL = Cass Lake (the lake); BR = Boatlanding Road; CL-C = Cass Lake (the city). I marked a few points with a green G. If you’re able to take a close look (clicking on the photo might help), you might see very small white circles that look very much like sites of golf courses’ sand greens.
RUNNING ITS COURSE
Cass Lake Golf Club operated on this site into the 1930s. In 1933, memberships cost $15 and greens fees were 50 cents. The club had an organizational meeting in April 1938, the Cass Lake Times reported, and an inter-club match was played against Bemidji in May 1938.
In 1939, Cass Lake Golf Club went through a significant change. I’ll let you know about that in my next post. In 1945, Henry Bingham sold his lodge to fellow St. Paul resident Davidson Burns, who renamed it The Burns. Carl and Freda Bixenstine bought the resort in 1952 and operated it until 1969. It operates today under the name Cass Lake Lodge.
Henry George Bingham, who worked at the Curtis and St. Paul hotels after selling his lodge, died in 1948. Seems a safe bet that he never met Calvin Coolidge nor witnessed what surely was the considerable hitch in his golf swing.
Photo at top of post is of Bingham Lodge, via lakesnwoods.com. Caption reads, “The Bingham Resort, Cass Lake Minnesota, 1940’s.” Thanks to the Cass County Museum and the Facebook group Children of Cass Lake MN for contributions to this post.
Snelling Avenue. You’ve probably heard of it. Main north-south artery for transportation on the western side of St. Paul. Traffic to rival that of a Martha’s Cookies stand as it rolls past the Minnesota State Fairgrounds.
Como Avenue. You’ve probably heard of it, too. If not, then you’ve probably heard of Como the lake (not the enormous one in Italy) or Como the golf course or Como the zoo. Como the avenue meets Snelling just south of the Minnesota State Fairgrounds, in the northwestern quarter of Minnesota’s capital city.
Now, about that golf course at Snelling and Como …
… There wasn’t one. But there was one darn close to it, almost a hundred years ago. And there was, to be fair, a golf club even closer.
I’m betting you never heard of either one.
The following entry in the 1923 American Annual Golf Guide tells us of the golf course and for all intents and purposes tells us where it was — unless you want to be picky, a right I reserve for myself a couple of paragraphs from now.
The Lake Park Golf Club, relatively small in stature and and as far as I can tell rather unremarkable in every other way, long ago and for maybe as little as one golf season occupied a thin, rectangular plot of land not quite at Como and Snelling but within a solid midiron strike of it.
Lake Park is Minnesota lost golf course No. 206. (The other 200-plus I have identified can be seen on my Google lost course map.)
Information on The Lake Park Golf Club is sketchy, beyond the confirmation that it did in fact exist. That can be found in the April 2, 1922, edition of the St. Paul Pioneer Press, within a short story about local indoor golf clubs shutting down for the season in advance of the outdoor season. (Indoor golf clubs in downtown St. Paul and Minneapolis were common in the 1920s.) The story mentioned “Carl Lindgren, who again this season will be at the Lakeview Golf club and Sig Hanson who will teach the game at the newly organized Lake Park golf club.”
To expand and then briefly retreat, all indications are that The Lake Park Golf Club was an arm of something called the Lake Park Club. Though I did find one mention of a Lake Park Commercial Club as early as 1915, the Lake Park Club is not listed in St. Paul city directories until 1922. Those entries were preceded by a mention in the Pioneer Press of Sept. 10, 1921, that the city council had granted “a license regulating the Selling and Handling of Foodstuffs” to six parties, including “Lake Park Club, Snelling and Como Aves.”
But I would bet Tiger Woods’ $20 million yacht if he only would cede it to me that Snelling and Como isn’t exactly where the golf course was. At least not the Como part of it.
A 1916 St. Paul plat map, the closest to 1922 that is readily available, shows a 38-acre parcel owned by Archibald Emerson that is bordered by Snelling Avenue on the west, Northern Pacific railroad tracks on the south, Hamline Avenue on the east and Wynne Street on the north. (Como Avenue is two blocks north of Wynne.)
University of Minnesota John Borchert Map Library plat map
The following two aerial photos of that parcel from 1923 are eminently revealing.
Aerial photos from University of Minnesota’s John Borchert Map Library.
The top photo shows the larger area near Snelling and Como, with part of the State Fairgrounds at the upper-left corner and part of Como Park on the right side. Snelling runs north-south through the entire left side of the photo. Como runs east-west, just above the midpoint of the photo. The presumed area of The Lake Park Golf Club is near the bottom-right-center of the photo.
The lower photo represents, I guess one would say, my Eureka! moment. Just north of the railroad tracks and east of Snelling is an area that I am 99 percent certain reveals a golf course. You might have to trust me on this, because I have looked at hundreds of old aerial photos of golf courses, and this parcel clearly shows fairway routing. Wynne Street is at the northern border of the golf grounds, with Breda Avenue one block north of that and Como one block north of Breda. (Note that the parcel just across Snelling to the west could be mistaken as fairway routings, but it almost certainly was a railroad switchyard.)
Click on either photo for a closer look. The bottom photo is pretty much a dead giveaway that a golf course was there. Driving around that area today, my impression is that there would have been room for a nine-hole golf course, albeit probably a short one.
The Lake Park Golf Club — assuming it was a private club — did not carry nearly the stature of St. Paul’s other private golf clubs. It received only a fraction of the coverage that was afforded by the Pioneer Press to the likes of Town & Country, Somerset, White Bear Yacht Club and Lakeview (renamed Hillcrest in 1923). Even the Phalen Park public course was mentioned more often.
But there were occasional nuggets. On April 7, 1922, the Pioneer Press listed Lake Park as one of nine members of the just-formed St. Paul Golf Association. On June 25, 1922, the newspaper reported that a St. Paul caddie tournament had been held, with Lake Park represented by Louie Rustad and Theodore Tupa. (Research shows a Theodore Tupa who was a Summit Avenue resident and bandleader in 1949.)
On June 4, the Pioneer Press reported that an open house would be held at Lake Park that day. The club, the newspaper said, “has not yet closed on its memberships. The fairways and greens are in splendid condition and plans are now underway for the completion of the club house.”
Whether the course survived into the 1923 season, I don’t know. Sharon Shinomiya of the Como Park Bugle graciously passed along this nugget to me, a passage from the St. Paul Daily News of April 1, 1923, in a story headlined “St. Paul Golf Clubs Prepare to Start Season Soon.”
“Chelsea Heights is the only course that is in doubt about having an instructor, but as golf pros are not lacking, it is probable that Chelsea Heights will have one also. This is the new course that was opened last year at Como …”
The Chelsea Heights reference surely was to the Lake Park course, which was — depending on whose hairs you care to split regarding geographical designations — in the Chelsea Heights or Tilden area of St. Paul’s Como neighborhood.
I found no other direct references to The Lake Park Golf Club in 1923 or beyond. By 1924, Sig Hansen (I believe this is the proper spelling of his last name) had become the new professional at Phalen Park. By 1928, the Archibald Emerson plot on which Lake Park golfers had played had been bought by Duluth & Virginia Realty Company of Minnesota, though the plot had not been commercially or residentially developed. Today, the old golf course land is occupied by the campus of Hmong College Prep Academy and apartment complexes, principally Como Park Apartments.
Former site of The Lake Park Golf Club, taken from Jessamine Avenue West at the southern edge of the former golf course grounds. Como Park Apartments are prominent on these grounds.Near the southwestern corner of the former Lake Park golf grounds, on what is currently the campus of Hmong College Prep Academy.
A few other notes on the Lake Park Club:
The 1922 St. Paul City Directory lists Lake Park Club as being headquartered at 1200 North Snelling — the intersection of Snelling and Como. Sam Y. Gordon was president and Earl P. Buglass was secretary (a Samuel Y. Gordon was Minnesota’s lieutenant governor from 1911-13). In a 1923-24 city directory, the club’s listed address was 1450 Breda Avenue (one block north of the golf grounds), with Samuel Skoog as secretary. A 1925-26 directory lists Buglass as secretary and the club at “Snelling Av ne cor (corner) Como Av.”
Subsequent references in city directories are titled “Lake Park Commercial Club,” based at 1208 North Snelling, and begin in 1926, with George Sweeney as secretary. Property cards at the Ramsey County Historical Society include frequent entries from 1926 through 1936, with notations such as confectionery, dance hall, 2 pool tables, roller skate rink, and “on sale.” The final entry, from Sept. 8, 1936, lists the property as “Roller Skating.”
Today, there is no longer a building standing at 1208 Snelling Avenue North.
There is one curious sidebar to the early history of Lakeview-then-Hillcrest Golf Club. It concerns the notion that half of an entire neighborhood of St. Paul could have become golf course grounds.
Preposterous, right?
In the end, probably yes. But maybe, just maybe, not if Charles Gordon had had his way.
The year was 1921, the month December. It was shortly after — barring some all-time Month No. 12 heat wave that I don’t know about — Lakeview Golf & Country Club had concluded its first season of play on a thin, rectangular plot at the northeastern corner of St. Paul, in what is now known as the Hayden Heights neighborhood. (Lakeview would become known as Hillcrest in 1923. Photo at the top of this post shows Hillcrest, now a Minnesota lost golf course, at Larpenteur Avenue in April 2019.)
If a two-paragraph entry in the Dec. 30 Minneapolis Star is to be believed, someone had bigger plans for the neighborhood than a mere 18-holer.
“New Club for St. Paul,” read a sub-headline on a longer story.
“A new golf club is planned for St. Paul which probably will be one of the largest in the northwest,” the entry began. “The club will have over 2,000 members and will be a 36-hole course.
“C.W. Gordon of the Somerset club is one of the principal backers. The club will be for the salaried men and the annual dues will be $25. C. Raynor will be employed as architect. The course will be built on the tracts of land near the Lakeview Club.”
Well, knock me over with a featherie.
Where do I start?
A) I never heard of such a thing.
B) Two thousand members? (Yes, the story read 2,000, not some other number.) That is preposterous on its face, even knowing that in 1921 golf in Minnesota and the Twin Cities was entering a decade of tremendous growth.
C) Thirty-six holes, with 18 in the neighborhood having been dedicated just months before? Seems unlikely, and I’ll get to more of that.
D) Did someone say Raynor?
There is this, in defense of the Star story: C.W. Gordon was a man of considerable means, so the idea that he had grand plans should come as no surprise.
Charles William Gordon was president of Gordon & Ferguson, a St. Paul clothing manufacturer and wholesaler. His family lived at 378 Summit Avenue and was well connected in business and sporting circles, tied to The Minikahda Club, Town & Country Club and then the patrician Somerset Country Club in Mendota Heights, of which Gordon was a principal founder in 1919. Gordon was so well connected, in fact, that he served as a pallbearer at the 1916 funeral of St. Paul railroad and banking magnate James J. Hill.
Gordon helped establish Somerset in part because he believed Town & Country Club had become overly congested, Rick Shefchik wrote in his classic Minnesota golf book “From Fields to Fairways.” Perhaps that same notion led Gordon to believe there was a similar opportunity in St. Paul’s northeast, where Lakeview/Hillcrest was founded in part as a response to perceived overcrowding at nearby Phalen Park Golf Course, established in 1917.
Still, it’s a stretch to think that area could have reasonably accommodated 36 more holes of golf. After all, even as early as 1921, three other clubs — Phalen, Lakeview and Northwood Country Club in North St. Paul — were already operating within five miles of the 36-hole site proposed by Gordon.
If you ask me, and I know you didn’t but I’m going to tell you anyway, I don’t see how 36 more holes would have fit into this area. (I’m operating under the assumption that the Star story referred to property only in St. Paul and not adjacent Oakdale or then-New Canada townships.) Here’s a 1916 plat map, closest to 1921 I could find:
Hayden Heights area of St. Paul, 1916 plat map. Much of the area was referred to as Furness’ Garden Lots. The diagonal road near the top-left corner represents the streetcar line that would have taken golfers to Lakeview/Hillcrest and presumably to Charles Gordon’s proposed 36-hole course. Area inside thin green line is what would become Lakeview/Hillcrest Golf Club in 1921. Plat map shows only a handful of structures in this entire area in 1916, but 36 more holes of golf there seems implausible. Plat map courtesy of University of Minnesota’s John Borchert Library.
After all that, here, at least if you are interested in golf history, is the most curious sentence in the Minneapolis Star report: “C. Raynor will be employed as architect.”
C. Raynor? No, frankly, I don’t see that.
The “C” most certainly was a typographical error, and the Raynor reference should have been to “S.,” or “Seth,” or “nationally renowned golf course architect Seth Raynor.” There was in fact a direct connection between Seth Raynor and Charles Gordon. Raynor was the architect hired by Gordon and other Somerset members to design their Mendota Heights Club in 1919, and while in Minnesota during that time period, Raynor also designed Midland Hills in Rose Township (now Roseville), which opened for play in July 1921.
But I know of no connection between Raynor and a proposed golf course in northeastern St. Paul, and none of a handful of informed golf-history sources I talked with knew of one, either.
My bottom line, I guess, is that all of this is a certain amount of ado about nothing. I’m thinking Mr. Charles W. Gordon concocted some sort of brilliant-in-his-head plan in 1921, fed it to a Minneapolis reporter late that year, and that nothing tangible ever became of 36 holes and 2,000 members and Seth Raynor in Hayden Heights.
But it’s interesting to imagine.
Thanks to Minnesota History Center oral historian Ryan Barland for digging up the Minneapolis Star story on Gordon and golf.
