Category Archives: Lost golf courses

Golf in Luverne: Three courses, two golfers, one good sport

Lost golf courses,

Before golf in Luverne, Minn., had Jerilyn Britz, it had Luverne Country Club, two other golf courses and Don Spease.

Connecting the dots, over 93 years’ worth of golf in Luverne:

Jerilyn Britz’s golf tale is well-known and oft-documented. As a teenager in Luverne, a city of 4,000 in the southwestern corner of Minnesota, she showed an aptitude for many sports but had not played golf until, while working as a lifeguard at the municipal pool in 1960, she received a push — not into the water — from the pool manager, Charles Weinman.

“He would come down every day and start talking about golf and tell stories about things that happened” on the course, Britz said by phone in January. Weinman persuaded Britz to pick up a club and take a few whacks at dandelions, and she soon began backswinging and downswinging with golf balls in the way. She was hooked.

“I hit one good shot and have tried to have that feeling ever since,” she said. “It was such a different feeling.”

Britz (pictured above, photo courtesy of Legends Tour) joined Luverne Country Club, won four club championships in the 1960s and turned professional at age 30. In July 1979, she participated in a little four-day soiree’ at Brooklawn Country Club in Fairfield, Conn., known as the U.S. Women’s Open, where she shot rounds of 70, 70, 75 and 69 to earn the title of national champion golfer of the year. It was the first of her two tournament championships in more than 20 years on the LPGA Tour, and she was named to the Minnesota Golf Hall of Fame in 2007. She continues to play events with famed fellow competitors on the Legends Tour.

Which brings us, quite indirectly, to Don Spease and another memorable round of golf, almost exactly 30 years before Britz’s.

But a round of a decidedly different ilk.

“Records were broken in more than one department Friday when Minnehaha Country Club held its annual invitational golf tournament,” the Argus-Leader of Sioux Falls, S.D., reported on Aug. 27, 1949.

This event wasn’t so much a golf tournament as it was a dawn-to-darkness marathon that featured a colossal field of 301 golfers and 150 door prizes.

“… there were some 1600 dollars of prizes awarded,” the newspaper continued, “more than in any previous tournament …

“… and possibly the 187 total score Don Spease of Luverne turned in is the highest round yet to be admitted to.”

Yes, that would be 187 strokes for 18 holes — pushing 100 per nine.

Nobody ever said golf was easy. (If they did, I can find a lie detector to hook them up to. And I’ll make sure it’s calibrated to maximum voltage, perhaps with a short circuit in a sensor.)

Spease could not master either the art of clearing water hazards or getting the ball in the hole. “It’s almost certain,” the Argus-Leader added, “that Spease’ 78 putts are pretty much of a mark. For his prodigious efforts the Luverne man won an auto spotlight and (really) a putter.”

Boyd Barrett was the skilled Luverne outlier in that tournament, shooting a 77 that landed him in second place. But others from across the border were hot on Spease’s tail.

“Luverne had the monopoly on high scores,” the Argus-Leader reported, “with Bob Lundberg joining Spease in that department by virtue of 19 strokes on one hole. Golf shoes are now his as a result.

“Harm Snook of Luverne dropped 24 balls into the river and won seven new balls and a fishing net to get back his old ones. Jim Sherman, also of Luverne, sank 14 and received a cap and four balls.”

Luverne didn’t have the market cornered on deposits into the Big Sioux River that day. “Cliff Chamley of Flandreau (S.D.) and E.P. Fortner of Mitchell dropped 11 and 10” balls into the river, the newspaper continued.

If you’re counting, and there’s no reason you should be, that’s 59 balls in the water from one set of four hapless fellows.

None of this would be rehashed here if not for a deep dive into the history of golf in Luverne and especially if not for Spease’s good humor and equanimity.

More than 68 years after his fateful foray into Sioux Falls, I dialed Spease’s phone number to see if he remembered his Minnehaha round or had any objections to a retelling.

On the other end of the line, Spease laughed.

“Yes, I remember,” he said — then offered an entirely reasonable caveat.

He had never golfed before that day.

Spease said he had traveled the 15 miles from Luverne to Minnehaha with his cousin and a couple of friends mostly so that the others could meet the tournament requirement of having a foursome to play. He was 16 years old.

“I played basketball and football,” said Spease, now 85. “They had to have a foursome, so they asked if I would go along. I said, ‘I don’t know anything about golf,’ but I went along.”

Once on the course, it quickly became evident that he was no match for Minnehaha CC and the Big Sioux.

“They gave me four balls to play with,” Spease said. “After the first two holes, I had lost two of the four balls in the river. So after that, when I got close to the river, they let me throw my ball across the river.”

Spease confirmed the report of his prize winnings. The auto spotlight went on his 1935 Ford. The putter was sold to a friend’s mother for $10. “That was a lot of money back then,” he said.

Finding competitive golf to not be in his athletic wheelhouse, Spease did not play again for many years. He worked in his family’s tire business in Luverne and at other jobs, has retired four times, he says, and boasts an ample record of volunteer and community service.

None of this has the first thing to do with lost golf courses, does it? But it is one of the best back stories I’ve run across.

On to business. Britz mailed me a copy of Luverne Country Club’s eight-page 50th anniversary pamphlet, published in 1989. One entry is a recounting titled “History of the golf course.”

“There were two golf courses in Luverne before the present course was developed,” the tale begins. “The first course was west of town on the site of the Gordon Gabrielson farm. It was a 9-hole layout, even with a water hole, on which some members used floater balls. … The second course was located three miles south and a half mile east of Luverne along the Rock River. It also was nine holes. This course lasted only a few seasons. It crossed the river several times and each spring it seemed the swinging bridges would wash away, and the mosquitos were so fierce they decided to abandon it. It was then in 1939 the course was moved east of Luverne on what was called the old Fogg Estate. Here is where the course has been for the last 50 years.”

Officially, golf in Luverne dates to April 23, 1925, when “permanent organization of the Luverne Golf club was completed,” the Rock County Star reported the next day. J.M. Rustad was the first president. Membership was to be limited to 100, with an impressive inaugural class of more than 80 signed up. The course would be established through a one-year lease on the 80-acre Charles Preston farm, 3.5 miles almost directly east west of downtown Luverne and immediately south of County Highway 5. (A Gabrielson family, referenced in the previous paragraph, owned the 240 acres to the south of the Preston farm, according to plat maps of the day.)

1936 aerial map of Gabrielson and Preston farms west of Luverne. The first version of Luverne Golf Club was on the Preston farm, in the top portion of the photo. The course had moved to its Rock River site by 1936, but at least two remaining sand-green sites appear to be visible in this photo, shown as small, dark circles on either side of the stream near the western edge of Preston’s property. Preston owned large lots of land to the south of here, along railroad tracks, but I see no indications of a golf course having been there, so I believe this was the golf course site. (Photo from University of Minnesota’s John Borchert Map Library.)

Luverne golfers played in tournaments at places like Worthington, 30 miles to the east, and staged competitions at their own club. Carl Schmuck won with a 71 in May 1929, and Perry A. Arnette, “Harmonica King and farmer,” according to the newspaper, was runner-up with a 75.

Arnette was a central figure in early Luverne golf. He served as Luverne GC president during the late 1920s, and in August 1931, plans were announced for Luverne Golf Club to move to the Rock River site, on land owned by Arnette.

This was thought to be a site of great potential. The course was to be laid out by Frank Brokl, the 1929 Minnesota State Amateur champion from Minneapolis who specialized in designing small-town courses across Minnesota, South Dakota and Iowa, including the now-lost courses at Lake Benton and Ivanhoe. The sand greens were to be 50 feet in diameter, the Rock County Herald reported, and the parcel was highly touted by the newspaper.

“Among the numerous advantages of the new grounds are scattered clusters of trees which shade some of the holes, the substantial grass growth and heavy sod; the natural hazard of the Rock River, which must be crossed twice while following the course, and the fact that a player must face the sun only on the first hole.”

Also, the newspaper reported, groves of trees skirting the river would “provide an ideal picnic ground, and a long stretch of sandy beach has possibilities of being developed into a swimming resort.”

The Herald story said the new grounds would not be put into play until spring of 1932 and that, in order to keep the grass closely cropped, “a flock of sheep will be pastured on the links.”

1935 plat map of Luverne Golf Club’s second site, established in 1932 or 1933 south of the city and straddling the Rock River. (Courtesy of Rock County Historical Society.)

Whether the Rock River site was put into play by 1932 is unknown. On Sept. 9, 1932, the Rock County Star reported that W.R. Brooks of Luverne won a shortstop at the “Old Golf Course,” presumably a reference to the Preston farm site and possibly hinting of problems in setting up the Rock River site.

Once the Rock River site opened, it lasted through 1938. In July 1934, Luverne hosted a “Tri-State tournament,” the Minneapolis Tribune reported. “The Luverne course is 2,881 yards long and supplied with many natural beauty spots and hazards,” the story read.

It’s almost certain that the club underestimated the Rock River’s ability to breach its banks and make golfing a muddy mess. Beyond the Luverne CC pamphlet, two others I talked with confirmed that flooding can be a problem in that area.

There certainly are few remaining bridges between the Rock River site and the current Luverne Country Club site east of town. One of them, coincidentally, is named Don Spease.

Spease remembered the Rock River site. “My dad used to go out and play golf there. I’d go along,” he said. “The course had sand greens. My job was to drag a piece of rope with heavy carpet so they could putt.”

Luverne GC abandoned the Rock River site and relocated two miles east of downtown for the 1939 season, eventually taking the name Luverne Country Club. An Argus-Leader story noted that the new course would open on May 14 with all greens ready and one day of free play for all. P.M. Conner was club president.

Britz, who now lives in Florida, loves the tree-lined layout at the current Luverne Country Club. She appreciates sunsets from the eighth tee, where, she says, one can see all the way to Iowa and South Dakota. “I’ve played golf all over the world,” she said. “I don’t think I have ever played a course as fun as Luverne.”

It’s tough to say whether Don Spease would say the same. He began golfing again in his 50s at Luverne CC and was a far more respectable player than during his Minnehaha day, with scores in the 50s for nine holes. Then fate intervened again.

“The last year I played golf out there, the first round of season, I was riding in a three-wheel cart,” Spease recalled, again summoning his sense of humor. The driver of the cart swerved to avoid a tree root, and Spease stuck his leg out of the cart to keep his balance.

“I broke my ankle,” he said.

Spease has not played the game again. Golf in Luverne lives on.

 

Gonvick, Oklee, Clearbrook and one confused salesman

Lost golf courses, , ,

For a place so unassuming, the lost golf course at Gonvick did have its moments.

I never said they were momentous. I said only that they were moments.

The lost golf course with the prophetic name — Lost River Golf Course — was established shortly before 1960, according to the admittedly sketchy information I could come up with — one or two word-of-mouth accounts, nothing that I could find in black and white. The course was south of downtown Gonvick, a north-central Minnesota city of 282, and immediately south of Minnesota Highway 92, which cuts diagonally through the city. Just to the south of the lost-course grounds flows the Lost River, so named, it is said, because it once passed under a bog until the bogs were drained.

There was nothing assuming about Lost River Golf Course. It was a small, public nine-holer, so devoid of frills that one paid greens fees at a gas station just off the highway and then went off to play. The routing essentially consisted of seven par-3 holes that ringed two par-4s.

Still, even in a city whose population has never exceeded 375, Gonvick deserves kudos for carrying a golf course through approximately four decades. Lost River was said to have lasted until close to 2000 — again, I could never pin down an exact closing date, with at least a half-dozen sources differing on whether it made it into the 21st century.

“It was a shorter course, but people in the area did support it,” said Rick Fischer, who played Lost River as a youth in the early 1970s and who eventually went on to become the activities director at Sauk Centre High School. Fischer remembered that a drive-in, like the gas station basically adjacent to the golf course, served as the clubhouse, and Corinne Richards, editor of The Leader-Record newspaper of Gonvick and Clearbrook, remembered that patrons would bring side dishes to the drive-in for club events.

Richards also remembered Lost River Golf Course’s brush with international recognition. (It’s true, but I suppose I should issue a hyperbole alert.)

“We had an exchange student from Norway who played the course,” Richards said. When the student returned to his homeland, Richards added, he gained playing privileges at European courses by showing his Lost River membership card.

Fischer also remembered a kid from up the road in Bemidji sweeping into town in the early 1970s and taking the golf course by storm. The kid’s name was Bill Israelson, and Fischer recalled that “Izzy” was probably 12 or 13 years old and barefoot when he came down to Gonvick and won the Lost River shortstop.

That is confirmed, and double confirmed.

“Billy Israelson burned up the Gonvick course to repeat as champion” of the shortstop, the Bemidji Pioneer reported on Aug. 21, 1972, noting that Israelson’s winning score was 3 under par.

Israelson, who went on to win three Minnesota State Amateur championships and played on the PGA Tour, even briefly leading the 1982 U.S. Open at Pebble Beach, confirms the story.

“True,” Israelson, now the professional at The Vintage in Staples, wrote in a Facebook post. “I had won the junior flight the previous two years, so the tournament chairman said I had to play in the men’s championship. I beat my neighbor and defending champ in a playoff after shooting 1 over par for 27 holes. The Gonvick golf course had sand greens. And I had 28 putts for the 27 holes!!”

That’s not all.

“I also met my future wife, Sarah Daman, age 9, and beat her dad Jim who was also playing in champ flight!!”

And about those greens. Lost River likely was among the last half-dozen golf courses in Minnesota with sand greens, which once served to throw an out-of-towner for a loop.

“”We had a salesman who would come by,” said Richards, “and say, why are there flags in the sand traps? The answer was, they weren’t in the sand traps — they were in the greens.”

Lost River Golf Course in Gonvick, 1960 aerial photo. Downtown Gonvick is at the top-right of the photo; the golf course is in the open area just to the south of Minnesota 92. Sand greens are visible in the form of small circles. Photo from John Borchert University of Minnesota Map Library and Minnesota DNR Landview service. Later photos available at HistoricAerials.com show greater detail but won’t be published here because they would throw my operating budget of zero dollars and zero cents way out of whack.

OKLEE

Twenty miles northwest of Gonvick, crossing a couple of county lines from Clearwater to Polk to Red Lake, lies the city of Oklee, where the lost-course tale has similarities to the aforementioned Lost River course.

Both courses were small-town — Oklee’s estimated population is 418, having peaked from the low 500s from the 1960s through the 1980s, more or less the heyday of the Oklee golf course, which likely was in operation from the early 1960s to the mid-1970s.

A smattering of clips from the Oklee Herald provided sketchy details. The earliest I found was from April 1964, urging readers “Don’t Drive Vehicles to the Golf Course!” because the club’s sod had been cut up from previous excursions. A story from May 7, 1964,  detailed the club’s spring meeting, which drew an attendance of 36 and at which a membership fee of $5 was set. That story also referenced tournaments that had been played the previous year, which makes 1963 the closest guess I can make as to the course’s founding.

In 1967, the officers included club president Don Fournier. Fees were $7.50 for an annual family season membership and 50 cents per round for public play. (Those are remarkably low fees, even for 50 years ago.)

Better than the Oklee Herald clips, though, a couple of townsfolk offered more information.

“Oklee is pretty flat, so there were no hills (on the golf course), but there were sand traps, I was told,” wrote Bonny Cote, editor of the Oklee Herald. “It was located on the south end of town and today is the home of many houses and a few apartment buildings … also a City Park with picnic shelter, tennis and volleyball courts.”

Cote said she had an uncle who built the first apartment buildings on the grounds of the abandoned course in 1977.

Cote then referred me to Oklee resident Bob Melby, who offered even more salient memories.

The course, Melby wrote in an email, “was planned by a group of local businessmen and owned by the city of Oklee. The local dentist, Dr. Harold Lindquist,  was one of if not the lead person. It operated until the mid 1970s at which time it was developed for housing.

“It was a five hole course with sand greens. To play nine holes you replayed holes 1, 2 & 3 and then went from hole 3 to hole 5 for hole 9. Annual fees were 7.50 and daily green fees of .50. It was on an honor system as there was no management staff, although they hired a person to mow the grass. A wooden lock box at the first tee was where you would pay.

“In the first few years a slice on holes 1 or 5 would put you on the local High School football field and a hook on hole 4 put you among grain bins. I played some golf there in my teens to early 20s but I wasn’t involved in the operation.”

Teachers Mr. Nordquist, Mr. Hietala and Mr. Arzdorf at the Oklee golf course, circa 1966.
Aerial photo of Oklee in 1984. In the lower part of the photo with the large open area with just a few homes and apartment buildings is where the golf course course was. Photos courtesy of Oklee Historical Society.

CLEARBROOK

If the lost courses at Gonvick and Oklee were tough nuts to crack — I made at least 25 phone calls just to come up with the sketchy information presented above — the lost course at Clearbrook, or at least the likelihood of one, was tougher than a double-thick macadamia shell sealed with Krazy Glue.

Despite many inquiries, I never did definitively determine whether there once was a golf course in Clearbrook, the next town down Highway 92 southeast of Gonvick.

But I think there probably was.

I came across multiple references to a Clearbrook golf club having participated in Central Minnesota Golf Association and Red River Valley tournaments — in 1930, 1932, 1933 and 1934 — and of Clearbrook golfers playing in tournaments in 1931 in Bemidji (the Birchmont), and other courses in 1930, ’33 and ’34. The most accomplished appeared to be one Wayne Randall, who advanced to the semifinals of a Central Minnesota tournament in 1934 before losing 2 and 1 to D.N. Tallman of Willmar, a former Minnesota Golf Association president and now, posthumously, a member of the MGA Hall of Fame.

Eyeballing aerial photos of the Clearbrook area from 1939, the earliest readily available, revealed nothing that definitely looked like a golf course, extant or abandoned. But the preponderance of mentions in old newspapers establishes, in my mind, that there once was a golf course in Clearbrook.

As always, information or opinions on any of these places are most welcome.

 

Red Lake Falls GC: Oui, je crois je l’ai trouvé

Lost golf courses

Is there a city in Minnesota with a more distinct French accent than Red Lake Falls?

Maybe, but pour l’amour de Dieu (for goodness’ sake), this place is something.

Allow me, then, to translate the title of this post. It reads, “Red Lake Falls GC (or Chutes du Lac Rouge GC, if you want that part in French): I believe I have found it.”

Why the bilingual mumbo-jumbo? It’s intended to be a tribute to the French heritage emanating from Red Lake Falls, a city of 1,400 in Red Lake County, 35 miles east of Grand Forks, N.D.

Red Lake Falls’ French roots run deeper than the roots laid down by the oaks spreading along the banks of the two rivers, Red Lake and Clearwater, that wind through the area. Red Lake Falls has a Champagne Avenue and a Langevin Avenue and a Bottineau Avenue. (Even the word “avenue” is of French origin.) All that’s missing is an Arc de Triomphe replica at the intersection of International and Champagne avenues. (No, I’m not suggesting one.)

The local campground in Red Lake Falls is named Voyageur’s View. The motel on Minnesota Highway 32 is the Chateau. They serve French fries (yeah, cheap joke) at Joe DiMaggio’s, the restaurant on the south side of town — though I have to nitpick here. If you were going to name a Red Lake Falls sports bar after a baseball Hall of Famer, why not Napoleon Lajoie, “The Frenchman,” 1896-1916, .338 career batting average?

Red Lake Falls’ founding speaks to its roots. In 1798, French Canadian trader Jean Baptiste Cadotte established a trading post at what is now Sportsman Park. The city’s better-known pioneer was a French-American named Pierre Bottineau. In 1876, he led a group of French-Americans northwest from Ramsey and Hennepin counties; they homesteaded the area and were joined two years later by a colony of French settlers from Upper Canada.

Today, much of the French heritage remains. Plat maps and telephone directories are chock-full of names of French origin. Red Lake Falls couldn’t be more French-connected if its high school were named Lafayette.

Which, of course, it is.

All of which has nothing to do with golf, unless one were to point out that there are scholars of the game who posit that a form of the “Scottish game” was played in, yes, France, Belgium and the Netherlands as early as the 15th century. But there is a connection, if only tangential, between golf in Red Lake Falls and the land of croissants and Bordeaux.

The city’s long-established golf course is Oak Knolls, a nine-hole layout along the Clearwater River on the west southeast side of town. Most web sites that include courses’ dates of founding list 1940 for Oak Knolls. That is true, but only in a kinda-sorta-not-the-whole-story way.

The Red Lake Falls Gazette of April 11, 1940, suggested golf had already been played in Red Lake Falls, reporting that the city’s golf club was about to be reorganized. The next week’s paper confirmed it. “Pierre Bottineau Golf Club Is Re-Organized,” the headline read. The golf course, it turned out, had “reverted back to nature” in recent years but was about to be revived on the same site — the one on the Clearwater River, same as its present-day site.

But in fact, golf on the Clearwater site predated 1940. And golf in Red Lake Falls went back even further.

Take it from a Minneapolis Tribune story of April 24, 1932. “The golf course at the new Red Lake Falls park has been reseeded and will be ready for play early in June, according to President Guy F. Hennings,” the Tribune reported. “More than 400 pounds of seed, mixture of blue grass and red top and clover, was spread over the entire six-hole course. The old course at the Phil Demarais farm will be used until the new one is fit for play.”

Demarais. Another classic name of French origin. And there’s your lost golf course. On the Phil Demarais farm. Wherever that was.

Time to put on my thinking beret and find the lost course.

PHIL’S FARM

Sometimes, pinpointing the site of a lost course takes less time than it takes to play a round of mini-golf. The lost course might be described in detail in an old newspaper story, or the first person you call happens to remember the eagle he made on the par-5 eighth in 1942 (“drove it past the silo on the right, grabbed my cleek, lofted it over the herd of sheep on the left, knocked in a 40-footer with my trusty MacGregor”).

And sometimes, Phil Demarais.

Tracking down the Demarais farm/lost golf course was not easy. Circling the area via an old aerial photo revealed nothing. An initial look at old plat maps, ditto — except for a 1950s map that showed property owned by a “Demaras” and coincidentally situated directly across the Clearwater from the Oak Knolls golf course. That, too, proved to be a dead end. Telephone calls to the Red Lake Falls area produced either “that number has been disconnected” or, when answered, puzzlement about any possible abandoned golf course or Phil Demarais — though a woman who had been born a Demarais offered a pronunciation of the name in those parts (DEM-uh-ruh) and suggested one might look near Terrebonne (“good earth” in French), a township and former town site southeast of Red Lake Falls. There was nothing in Terrebonne plat maps, though, except more French names that weren’t Demarais: Cadieux, Sauve, Laframboise and dozens of others.

Nothing showed promise until a relatively deep search for Phil Demarais background on the Internet. Finally — please excuse moi for two more Francophone references — voila!

Mr. Demarais was quite the notable character.

Phillip Demarais, born in 1874 in Weedon, Quebec, was the son of Red Lake County pioneer John Baptiste Desmarais I, according to an entry in the geneaology web site RootsWeb, citing an entry in “A History of Red Lake County.” (Other web sites also note different spellings of the surname; it seems possible Phillip dropped the first “s.”) He lived and farmed in Pleasant Lake Township, the web site entry read.

“Phillip loved to dance and would often call the squares at the neighborhood dances. He played the mouth harp and could even bang a good rhythm on a common dish pan.”

RootsWeb also cited a Red Lake Falls Gazette story, date not mentioned, that asserted Demarais devised an improvement for a thresher part that was patented by a Minneapolis “expert” with no credit or profit to Demarais.

“Phillip also played hard during his lifetime,” the Gazette story continued, “and had a very good singing voice. After a few drinks of Blue Ribbon Whiskey he could be quite an entertainer. …

“He was known in the area as a man who was always there when someone needed help, especially around butchering time because he could make salt pork better than anyone.”

All that aside, I still wanted most to find out where his farm was, and where the lost golf course lay.

The notation that Demarais’ farm was in Pleasant Lake Township (more commonly referred to as Lake Pleasant Township) sent me back to the Red Lake County plat maps. And there it was. Maps from 1911 and 1916 both show plots owned by either/and/or “Philip Desmarais,” Delina Desmarais (Phillip’s first wife) and D. Desmarais at the very northeastern corner of Lake Pleasant Township, 3.2 miles southeast of downtown Red Lake Falls and adjacent to Terrebonne Township on the west. In current terms, the farm was at the southwest corner of the intersection of county roads 114 and 115.

Oui, je crois je l’ai trouvé.

Site of Phil Demarais farm, 1916 plat map, courtesy of University of Minnesota’s John Borchert Map Library. The site of the lost Red Lake Falls Golf Club on Demarais’ farm is at the northeast corner of Lake Pleasant Township, southeast of Red Lake Falls.

The Demarais course likely was the first one in Red Lake Falls. A Gazette story from May 1, 1930, reported that the city’s golfers were organizing and planned to build a course on the Demarais farm. Beyond that, I know little about the course — number of holes, length of course, etc. The Demarais plot was mostly flat, sharply rectangular, and bisected by Lower Badger Creek. I later learned from John Thibert, president of the Red Lake County Historical Society, that such a layout was a French staple — they typically would divide sections of land in rectangular fashion so as to afford as many residents as possible access to a waterway and with a house nearby.

By now, you shouldn’t be surprised by some of the names of the folks who owned land near the Demarais farm: Ducharme, Champeau, Quesnell, Gagnon, Robillard, Latendress … you get the idea.

The golf course on the Demarais plot was abandoned in 1932, according to the aforementioned Minneapolis Tribune story. Demarais sold the farm in 1936, according to the Gazette story, “semi-retired,” and bought and operated a grocery store in nearby Brooks before selling again and moving to Terrebonne, near one of his favorite fishing holes. When he died in 1952 of tuberculosis in Thief River Falls, he was, according to one Internet entry, the last surviving pioneer settler in Red Lake County.

Golf in Red Lake Falls lived on after moving off the Demarais property and onto the current Oak Knolls site. In April 1932, committees were chosen for the six-hole Red Lake Falls Golf Club, with Otto F. Hennings as president and memberships costing $10. M.E. Jones, an engineer with the state highway department, presented a sketch of the golf course. Three additional holes along the bend of the Clearwater River were not to be put into play until 1933.

It took until mid-1932 for the course to be playable. The Gazette reported on July 28 that the course at Bottineau park was now open, employing six sand greens and supported by 33 members.

“Some of the local golfers who have played the course and have lost a goodly number of balls complain the course is too sporty,” the newspaper reported. “Others who make the rounds and return with more golf balls than when they started say it isn’t sporty enough. The truth probably lies between those two extremes and the bulk of the players say it is going to be just right.”

Though I did not scour every issue of the Gazette through the rest of the 1930s, what I did scan revealed no more signs of golf in Red Lake Falls until April 1940, with the mention of the club, now named Pierre Bottineau, having reorganized after the previous period of inactivity.

The course’s name at some point was changed from Bottineau to Oak Knolls, and it exists today as a nine-holer with grass greens. “You will be challenged to keep your ball dry as a small stream, the pond, or the river entices your ball to take a dip,” reads a passage on redlakefallsgolf.com.

Carry on, Red Lake Falls golfers. Au revoir, Monsieur Demarais.

1939 aerial photo of Red Lake Falls’ current golf course site, bottom-center of photo. The course was on the open land just to the south of the Clearwater River. The golf course likely was not operational in 1939, but it was re-established in 1940. Note that the land on the peninsula is covered with trees and clearly includes no golf holes, which goes against the notion posited in 1932 that the course soon would expand to nine holes, taking up the peninsula land. Aerial photos courtesy of University of Minnesota’s John Borchert Map Library.
Current grounds of Oak Knolls Golf Club. Note that the layout covers the land on the peninsula.

 

Hallock Golf Club: A northwest passage

Lost golf courses

Which Minnesota golf course is closest to the northwestern corner of the state? Close call. Really, really close.

The margin is thin — blade-of-bentgrass thin, figuratively speaking.

I was going to say it’s a heated competition, but since we’re only a quarter of a tank of gas away from Canada, “heated” might not be the best adjective.

Presenting the contenders for the title:

In this near-corner, Lancaster Riverside Golf Course, in north-central Kittson County. The first tee at Riverside lies 21.59 miles from the convergence of the borders of Minnesota, North Dakota and Canada, near the city of Emerson, Manitoba.

And in the other near-corner, Two River Golf Club in Hallock, west-central Kittson County. The first tee at Two River lies 21.04 miles from that same point of trilateral convergence. So that makes Two River closest to the corner, by the margin, literally speaking, of a few dozen wheat combines set side by side.

What’s the point? There is none, I suppose, except to perhaps answer a question of Minnesota golf-and-geography trivia. (Or maybe this corner stuff matters to me only because I grew up playing the Minnesota course closest to the southeastern corner, Ma Cal Grove in Caledonia. 440.6 miles away from Two River.)

Still, neither Two River nor Lancaster takes the all-time northwestern corner cake. That distinction, as far as I can determine, belongs to this place …

… “My first recollections of the Hallock Golf Club are the late twenties when the course was located a mile north of town — on the west side of the Great Northern tracks and just south of the North branch of the Two River,” wrote R.C. Nelson, a Hallock businessman and banker, for the Hallock Centennial Book 1883-1983 and reprinted here with permission of the Celebrate Hallock committee.

So, for the record, Hallock Golf Club, now a lost course, is the northwestern corner king. The course’s site, now undeveloped, lies 19.2 miles from the MN-ND-Manitoba border. (Don’t get picky on me — I don’t know where the first tee was.)

Nelson described Hallock Golf Club in detail in his writing.

“It was constructed by the local golf enthusiasts — in 1929, was nine holes and of course sand greens,” Nelson wrote. “The terrain was a little rolling and three greens were in the woods, not too far from the river.”

Site of Hallock Golf Club, 1940 aerial photo, University of Minnesota’s John Borchert Map Library. The Great Northern railroad tracks and U.S. Highway 75 run parallel to each other just east of the golf course.

By Nelson’s recollection, the sixth hole was the longest, just over 300 yards, and the ninth was the shortest, just over 100 yards. Par for the course, Nelson wrote, was 34.

“The tees were about six feet by eight feet — a four by four wood frame, filled with packed river sand. As a kid I used to caddy when they had special matches and tournaments and I remember seeing a few wood shafts broken over those four by four wood frames — the result of a whiff or a wild shot.”

A handful of Kittson County Enterprise newspaper entries from the early 1930s also offered tidbits on Hallock Golf Club. The July 11, 1930, edition reported that John Stratte, “eldest son of Dr. and Mrs. Joseph Stratte of this city, made a hole in one on the local course this week.” Stratte’s ace came on the second hole, “about 170 yards.”

In July 1930, the Enterprise reported that golfers from Lancaster had joined Hallock GC. (That city’s Riverside course was established in 1995, according to at least one golf web site.) In August 1930, plans were announce for a Hallock Golf Club tournament “drawing players from all parts of the country” and with the winner to receive a $15 golf bag. “To date,” the Enterprise reported, “the lowest score turned in is a 35 shot by Dr. Treleaven.” Plans also had been drawn up for the “first annual (I forgive the grammatical indiscretion) Kittson County Golf Tournament.” An entry fee of 50 cents was “payable at Taft’s Café or to Mr. Wass.”

In April 1931, a club meeting was held, and annual fees of $10 were set. On May 1, the Enterprise noted that a clubhouse for the grounds was planned.

Nelson’s account noted a timeline typical for golf courses of the era that were destined to become lost courses. “The course remained much the same until the war (World War II) when the number of players dwindled as the younger men went into the service but the old group kept it going,” Nelson wrote. “After the war, new interest developed and a deal was made with the landlord to get a few more acres so the course so the course could be stretched out and so drainage work could be done as the course flooded almost every time there was a shower of rain.”

Later in his composition, Nelson wrote: “The floods finally got the best of us plus the fact that the landlord kept raising the rent so some talk was started towards finding a new site. I tried to get the Lake Bronson Commercial Club interested in attempting to get a new course built on the lake park property — thinking Karlstad, Lancaster and Hallock could get in the act and get a real good course but I couldn’t develop sufficient interest.”

Nelson did not definitively note what year the site northwest of town was abandoned, nor can I make a reasonable estimate based on his writing. He does note his role in the founding of the golf course at the current site — the Two River course, which also has gone by the name Oak Ridge Golf Club / Country Club.

Thanks to Cindy Adams, director of the Kittson County Museum, for providing information and materials.

Housecleaning, Part I: Fertile, Kerkhoven, Renville, Warren

Lost golf courses, , ,

I could go either way on this group of lost golf courses.

This way: Keep digging. Dig deep enough, you’ll miss another two dozen lost courses in Minnesota and hit one in China instead.

Oh, stop it. You know darn well you were told as a kid that if you kept digging, you’d hit China.

Anybody know how to yell “Fore!” in Mandarin?

Or thataway: Cut bait. Tell folks what little you know about these lost courses, and cut your losses.

For now, I’m going thataway.

Here are a few more of Minnesota’s lost golf courses, their short stories and their very short stories. In all cases, I either reached dead ends in coming up with more information or, I confess, wasn’t sufficiently motivated to try. (So many other lost courses out there to track down. So little time.) 

WARREN

“Work Started on Links at Warren,” read the headline on a one-paragraph story in the Minneapolis Tribune of May 15, 1932. The story said the golf course would be 3 1/2 miles west of the city, which is in Marshall County and 25 miles northeast of Grand Forks, N.D. The story said the Warren course would open for the 1933 season.

But that probably wasn’t the start of golf in Warren.

An Aug. 23, 1931, story in the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported on a Red River Valley Golf association tournament to be played in early September at the Minakwa course in Crookston. More than a dozen clubs were expected to have entrants, including Warren.

Whether that means there was a golf course in Warren before 1932, I can’t say. But a Warren Sheaf story from May 4, 1932, implied that a new site was being prepared on the Dudley Cheney farm, with more than 50 signed memberships for the golf club. Cheney was to operate and maintain the course.

According to a 1928 plat map, Dudley Cheney owned a plot in Boxville Township, 3 1/2 miles west-southwest of downtown Warren, near the intersection of what is now Marshall County Highway 104 and 210th Street Northwest. The Snake River crossed the very southwest corner of Cheney’s land. Most likely, this is where the golf course was built in 1932, though I could not confirm that with anyone.

(By the way, Dudley Cheney’s wife “was in Warren having some dental work done last Wednesday,” according to the Warren Sheaf of Jan. 24, 1917. Which of course is neither here nor there nor any-darn-where, but I just thought I’d include it to show the depths to which community reporting in long-ago newspapers sometimes descended.)

In late May of 1932, the Sheaf reported, Grand Forks golf professional Walt Arneson arrived to lay out the Warren course on the Cheney farm. Arneson was a University of North Dakota golf coach and a pro at Grand Forks Country Club and the municipal course (presumably Lincoln) in Grand Forks who is credited with having laid out Grand Forks CC as well as courses in Grafton, N.D., and Red Lake Falls, Minn. (more on that lost course coming soon).

The Sheaf’s account of Arneson’s arrival included the superlatives typically attached to reporting on golf courses all across Minnesota, from all eras.

“Possibilities of making the Warren course one of the sportiest courses in the Northwest were expressed by Mr. Arneson who … was impressed with the natural surroundings of woodlands and water hazards caused by coulees.” Arneson was later to have staged a four-hole exhibitions on the grounds, which was to cover more than 3,000 yards and include two holes longer than 300 yards.

Dudley Cheney farm, 1936, aerial photo courtesy of University of Minnesota’s John Borchert Map Library. The golf course that likely once lay on the property isn’t evident, though the terrain described in a Warren Sheaf story is. The Snake River can be seen at the bottom of the photo.

The golf course did not open at the crack of springtime in 1933. It took until June 21 for the Sheaf to report in a headline, “Warren Golf Course Ready for Playing.” And it took until July 12 for the Sheaf to make it definitive, including attaching a name to the grounds. “Oakwood Golf Course Will Be Opened Sunday,” the headline read, with the otherwise only notable detail being that the course would have a par of 35.

After that, I found no mentions of golf in Warren until the Warren Riverside course was established just outside the northeastern corner of the city limits. Internet entries variously report the Riverside’s founding year as 1946 and 1950. It remains in operation.

FERTILE

An August 1928 Minneapolis Tribune story detailed a “first annual” (redundant, I know, I know) Red River Valley Golf association tournament at the Minakwa course in Crookston. Six golfers from Fertile were among the field of 100 expected entrants.

In August 1931, the same organization held a tournament, again at the Minakwa course and again with Fertile golfers expected to participate.

Confirmation that there once was a course in Fertile, a Polk County city 25 miles southwest of Crookston, comes in the form of a Crookston Daily Times story of July 23, 1931, in which 16 golfers from Minakwa were headed for a match in Fertile. And in August 1931, Fertile was identified by the Minneapolis Tribune as the host club and defending title holder in “the annual Tri-City Golf tournament … with entries from Twin Valley, Fertile and Ada (home of western Minnesota’s first golf course).

All that said, I have only two things to add: 1) I have no information on exactly where the Fertile course was or when it was abandoned; and 2) as a longtime newspaperman, I am proud of myself for having written a few paragraphs about Fertile without so much as alluding to the infamous, alleged newspaper headline about the town.

Oops, I guess I just did.

Note: The current Sandhill River Golf Course in Fertile was established in 1997.

KERKHOVEN

There is a word known as bass followed by a non-word as ackward — sorry, I usually try to keep this web site rated G — that can be united to form a word that fits my depth of knowledge on the two lost courses in Kerkhoven, a city of 700, situated 110 miles west of St. Paul in Swift County.

I’ll start with what I’ll call the bass part, and no offense intended in any fashion.

I was able to come up with a half-dozen nuggets on the original Kerkhoven Golf Club, on the southeast side of town.

“A nine-hole golf course opened in this city,” reported the St. Cloud Times on Aug. 12, 1931, the reference being to Kerkhoven.

The Kerkhoven Banner had reported on the development about a month earlier.

“The Kerkhoven nine-hole golf course was officially opened to the public last Sunday and every evening since that time has been crowded to capacity,” the Banner reported. A greens fee of 50 cents was being charged for public play, with no fee for charter members.

The Banner reported that the nearest golf course was in Benson, though that point is arguable. Benson Golf Club, 16 miles northwest of Kerkhoven, was established in 1925; Willmar Country Club, now known as Eagle Creek Golf Club, whose first nine holes were designed by the estimable Tom Vardon, was established in 1931 and is 14 miles southeast of Kerkhoven.

Anyway, back to Kerkhoven. On Aug. 14, 1931, the Banner published an admonition. “Because of the popularity of the Kerkhoven Golf course, for the purpose of protecting the children . … No children of members shall play on the course on Sundays or holidays or after three o’clock P.M. weekdays.” No caddies were permitted to carry bags on the course without registering. The club had 41 members and was planning to stage a tournament.

I don’t know how long this iteration of golf in Kerkhoven lasted, though a 1938 aerial photo shows a golf course that appears to have been still operating or at most had only recently closed.

1938 aerial photo of Kerkhoven Golf Club, courtesy University of Minnesota John Borchert Map Library. The layout is plainly seen on the south side of U.S. Highway 12, which cuts diagonally through the photo. Residences on the southeastern edge of Kerkhoven are shown in the upper-left corner of the photo. Six greens, presumably composed of sand, are clearly visible as dark circles, and routings of even more holes are visible.

Which brings us to ackward, i.e. Kerkhoven’s second lost course — ackward because it’s a relatively recent lost course, and I know almost nothing about it. A Banner story from 1975 reported that the club would be in operation soon. The course was on the northeast side of town, near County Highway 6. I talked with a couple of people who played the course but passed along few details, other than that it also had sand greens and an “honest-john” can in which patrons would deposit their greens fees. The grounds were leased to the club by a local farmer, and the course ceased to exist when a lease agreement could no longer be worked out.

Kerkhoven’s current golf course is on the northwestern edge of town.

I have no doubt there are people who have more salient memories of Kerkhoven’s second lost course. I would love to hear from any of them.

RENVILLE

Indications are that this southwestern Minnesota city’s golf course was short-lived.

“Renville Golf Course To Open Sunday, June 16th,” read a headline in the June 7, 1928, Renville Star Farmer. “The Renville Golf Club organized a few weeks ago have succeeded in building on the old fair grounds site a small golf course especially suited for the needs of this city,” the newspaper reported. Annual dues were set at $5.

On June 17, 1928, the Minneapolis Tribune reported that a shortstop had been held at the Renville golf course.

But I found only one other mention of the course, and it was perhaps foreboding. Later in June, the Star Farmer reported that an “important” meeting was to be held concerning the club. It’s a wild guess, but I’m thinking the club disbanded and the course was abandoned by late summer of 1928.

I confess I know more about common wrens than I know about Renville, so I can’t say where the “old fair grounds” were. The Renville County Fair is now held in Bird Island (speaking, I guess, of wrens). Inquiries about the city of Renville’s fair grounds site have to date gone unanswered.

Update, May 2018: A 1930 listing of Minnesota golf courses lists a six-hole course in operation at Renville, so my speculation that the course was gone by summer 1928 obviously is incorrect.