Island outposts: Coney Isle and Circle Lake

Lost golf courses, Twin Cities metro, , , ,

Note to readers: This is a slightly altered version of a story I wrote for the 2024 Directory issue of Minnesota Golfer Magazine. It includes some previously unpublished information and photos. Thanks to the Minnesota Golf Association for offering a print venue. Also, this is my first post in about a year, as my website had stopped operating properly. It is back in action, albeit with some gllitches that I can’t fix, plus the caveat that I don’t know how long it’ll remain operational.

Main image: Circle Island, Rice County, 1980s photo courtesy of Shawn Nugent.

Minnesota’s 600-plus golf courses, past and present, have taken up residence just about everywhere: mounted on hilltops, perched alongside lakes, rooted next to rivers, cozied up to cul de sacs, flanked by forests, put out to pastures and deserted on islands.

Wait, what? Say that last part again.

A Minnesota golf course on an island? It’s unheard of.

Yep, pretty much.

Other places have golf courses on islands. Great Britain rules, with more than 3,000 existing courses in England, Scotland and Wales. New York’s Long Island reportedly has more than 140, many of them famed. On Mackinac Island in Michigan, four courses. Anchored next door to us, Wisconsin’s island courses include the Robert Trent Jones-designed and double-greened Madeline Island Golf Club in La Pointe.

But in 130 years of organized Minnesota golf, in a state that accommodates 10K lakes and more, the all-time count of island courses appears to be a mere two, both born exactly a century ago and both long gone. Except for their staging sites, neither course was remarkable. But hey, they had that surrounded-by-water thing going for them.

CONEY ISLE

On a crisp September morning in 2023, a boatful of a dozen curiosity-seekers set off from shore at Lake Waconia Regional Park, their destination a mile away, a landing near the southwestern tip of Coney Island of the West (theories vary as to the origin of the name; it also was known as Paradise Island in the early 1900s). The 31-acre island as a whole was the excursion’s main attraction; only one visitor had a particular interest in what once lay near its eastern shore. (This is called fore-shadowing, please excuse the pun.)

It’s a fascinating place, beyond its thick woods, winding trails and the inviting backdrop of the city of Waconia, prominently in view a half-mile away. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places, Coney Island of the West holds archeological and historical significance.

Indigenous people visited the island for centuries before it was settled by those of European descent, and relics continue to be found there. Lambert Naegele bought the island in 1884, platted it with streets named after German authors such as Goethe, and built a large hotel. The land was platted and sold. Private cabins were built on the lots.

Reinhold Zeglin and sons operated the island resort before the turn of the 20th century. The Zeglins’ interests included sports; they built a bowling alley, added croquet grounds and hosted the University of Minnesota football team, coached by Gilmore Dobie, for preseason training from 1903 to 1905. Workouts were held on a small, flat, open patch on the eastern end of the island.

“Better spot could not be found if the world was raked with a fine-toothed comb,” the Minneapolis Journal declared of Coney Island in August 1904.

Two decades later, J.W. Zeglin invited sportsmen of a different bent to play a burgeoning game on the grounds.

“Coney Isle Hotel / Open season May 1924 on May 29th,” began an ad in the Minneapolis Tribune. “Under same management for 36 years.”

The kicker followed, no football reference intended …

“Five-hole golf course.”

Site of the former Coney Isle Golf Course at the far eastern end of Coney Island in Lake Waconia. Undated photo courtesy of Carver County Historical Society.

Coney Island lay 30 miles southwest of Minneapolis. A round trip by rail could be secured for $1.50, the ad said. Room and board would cost $3.50 to $4.50 per day, with “splendid Sunday dinner” for $1.00.

Guests were ferried to and from the island. Zeglin would attract up to 1,000 visitors for events, it is said, so it’s no wonder he might have considered a golf course a worthwhile side attraction.

But could it really be considered a golf course?

Wendy Petersen Biorn, executive director of the Carver County Historical Society, had heard of reports about golf on Coney Isle but had expressed skepticism about the bona fides. The boat trip illustrated why.

The former “golf course” is the size of a football field, not coincidentally, and not much more. It’s reasonable to imagine a longest hole of about 130 yards, a couple more of 75 to 80, and one or two others that would be no more than pitch-and-putt. That’s if you stretch it.

Zeglin spread word of his golf course south. In addition to Minneapolis papers, Coney Island was advertised in newspapers in Kansas City, Omaha and Bartlesville, Okla. The latter’s ad inexplicably said the isle was 130 miles from the Twin Cities. An Omaha Evening World-Herald ad boasted, “The individual service, the atmosphere of refinement and the ideal location of this summer resort have put it in a class by itself for real merit.”

But as a golf course, Coney Isle was small potatoes – and shrinking ones at that.

After the five-hole reference in 1924, a Minneapolis Journal story in 1925 referred to “a four-hole golf course, located on the island.” And then in 1928, a Journal description had reduced the grounds to a “four-hole putting course.”

That was the last reference I could find to golf on Coney Island.

The island’s popularity had peaked before that, and even though a dance hall, restaurant and more cabins were added starting in 1940, everything was left to deteriorate starting in 1958. Vandalism contributed to further degeneration until efforts to revitalize began in 1975. Today, Carver County continues work, with picnic grounds, trails, beaches and a boat launch, and plans to improve the island even further.

As for golf, one tangential connection remains. A mile and a quarter across Lake Waconia lies a real, complete, functioning course — Island View Golf Club, the Minnesota Golf Association’s 2023 Member Club of the Year, from where Coney Island can be seen across the water.

CIRCLE ISLAND and GOLF COURSE

In the exact months J.W. Zeglin was starting something small on one island, Graham Sharman was planning something very big on another.

Sharman was president of Sharman & Cross, a Minneapolis real estate brokerage and investment firm in the 1920s. On March 5, 1924, the Faribault Journal ran a story headlined “WILL ESTABLISH BIG RESORT.”

The story began: “The firm of Sharman & Cross, of Minneapolis, have announced that they will construct a S1OO,OOO summer resort in Rice county this year, work to begin just as soon as the frost is out of the ground. …”

Culling from newspaper accounts, the project’s stated features would include a hotel, cabins, playground, tennis courts, concert pavilion, waterslide, boathouse, ferries and — the centerpiece — an 18-hole island golf course.

“… Rice county,” the Journal story stated, “is assured of the finest summer resort in Southern Minnesota.”

We shall see.

Weeks earlier, Caroline Dulac had for $40,000 sold 130 acres of property that had been in her family since the previous century. The tract, near the center of Rice County, consisted of a 100-acre island on Circle Lake and 30 acres adjoining its eastern shore.

Circle Lake, not particularly circle-shaped but whatever, lies eight miles north of Faribault, nine miles southwest of Northfield and 40 miles south of downtown Minneapolis. As golf’s popularity boomed in the early 1920s, Sharman no doubt considered his market demographics and seized on an opportunity.

Sharman and business partner Thomas Cross promoted their project with ads in Minneapolis and Faribault newspapers, and composed large, detailed announcements touting the newly named Circle Island and Golf Course. The copy writers heaped on hyperbole and breached a border into bombast.

“Fore!!!” blared one ad featuring a map showing Circle Lake and its proximity to Minnesota cities.

“A frolicking swim in the sparkling water on your own sandy beach. … An hour’s boating with gamey fish beneath, daring you to drop your line. … Back to rest under your own maples or to stroll in the woods, but wait — A hundred steps away — the Golf Course — YOUR Golf Course. Oh Boy! Perhaps a hole in one, at least a birdie; anyway it’s a grand old game.”

Sharman and friends consistently made claims that were outlandish or perilously close to it. Principally, suggestions of an 18-hole course were half-baked. The island didn’t have nearly enough room for 18 palatable holes, not to mention room to also accommodate the 249 small residential lots, most of them 50 by 150 feet, that were platted around the island’s perimiter.

Yet there was room for golf. Work on a course, scaled down to nine holes, began in mid-April 1924. “A well known golf course architect has the course under construction,” a Sharman & Cross ad read in part. “The course covers the center of the island and has been pronounced the best natural course in the Midwest.” (My research never turned up a name associated with the design, though over the exact same months Northfield Golf Club, designed by William Clark, architect of Twin Cities public courses and many others, was being built 10 miles away.)

The Circle Island routing looks legit. Using Google maps and an ad that showed tees and greens, hole lengths can be estimated. The course likely measured close to 2,500 yards. The first hole, accessed after a ferry ride, would have progressed southward about 293 yards. Second hole, north to the center of the island, about 350 yards. The fourth was probably the longest, close to 500 yards, likely a dogleg. No. 7 was the shortest, at the northwest corner of the island and measuring about 120 yards.

Speculative routing and scorecard for Circle Island Golf Course. (My digital artistic publishing skills are primitive at best, you’ll notice, and I hope this is at least marginally readable.)

Circle Island Golf Course featured no holes alongside Circle Lake. Lots bordering the course were wooded, creating what one modern-day observer calls a “reverse links” effect: The trees stood as a link between the lakeshore and the higher ground above, which had been clear-cut decades before.

The course opened before summer broke in 1924. There was scant newspaper coverage of golf, but there were sporadic reports on events at the “resort” (sans hotel, cottages and more). A Theopold-Reid Co. picnic drew more than 100 visitors, and a Faribault Weekly Journal photo showed company president H.C. Theopold following through on a drive at the golf course. A Farm Bureau picnic that doubled as an opening ceremony for the development drew 7,500, the Minneapolis Journal reported, and a team from Faribault defeated one from Northfield in the first competition at the course.

H.C. Theopold, president of the Theopold-Reid Company, teed off on the first hole of the Circle Island Golf Course, whcih had opened only weeks earlier. Photo published in the Faribault Journal, July 1924, and reprinted with assent from the Minnesota Historical Society.

Sharman in March 1924 had said it would take two to three years for the resort to be completed. A century later, it still isn’t completed, and it was barely ever started. A dance pavilion on the “mainland” 30 acres was built and proved popular, with entertainment by the likes of the Dixie Dance Demons, before burning down in 1938. The island, meanwhile, lay almost untouched except for nine greens and nine concrete golf cups, one of which was discovered by Shawn Nugent, who owned the island in the late 1980s and now operates a business on Circle Lake’s eastern shore.

Despite reports of thousands of visitors to the resort, it’s a mystery as to whether Graham Sharman ever persuaded a client to purchase an island lot. Dennis Henry, a retired Gustavus Adolphus physics professor, spent a few summers in the 1950s helping farm the island with his uncle Herb Younker, who owned it. Duties included ferrying cattle across the lake. Henry’s recollection was that there was only one building on the island, a tiled house with poured concrete floors. He remembered airplanes landing on the island, and “it was amazing how little the trees had encroached on the area.” Nugent said an old foundation and well casing exists on the southern half of the island. He said the island is largely overgrown now. It is principally owned by a Prior Lake party and for a time in late 2023 was listed on Internet sites as being for sale, with an asking price of $1,030,000.

The Circle Island Golf mystery is further complicated by how long — or the opposite — the course operated. A 1958 paper held by the Rice County Historical Society declared that “during the depression, the resort quieted to nothing.” A 1999 newspaper story was headlined “Depression kills island course,” but offered no supporting evidence of the timeline.

It’s more likely the course was abandoned before 1930. A Faribault News ad from 1926 promoted a three-day Fourth of July celebration, including golf, but after that … nothing. Dozens of searches and microfilm scans of newspapers from 1927-1930 produced no evidence the course was still in play. Sharman & Cross is last listed as a business in the 1926 Minneapolis city directory, and by 1927, both principals were listed as salesmen for Minneapolis bond broker John C. Kuck & Co.

Whether the demise of the Circle Island project qualifies as tragedy is arguable. After all, close to 250 other Minnesota golf courses have similarly been abandoned. As for actual tragedy …

Henry remembered that one summer, an independent-minded steer was among cattle ferried to the island for summer vacation. It made a break for freedom by starting a swim back to the mainland. “That steer had been a problem,” Henry said.

A phone call from a neighbor on the mainland followed. You’d better come get your steer, the neighbor said, because it’s floating in the lake, belly up.

It had been struck by lightning and killed.

When it was suggested the steer deserved credit for ingenuity, Henry retorted, “It got its come-uppance.”

Sources for this story include the Carver and Rice County historical societies, and MNOpedia.org.

CIRCLE ISLAND POSTSCRIPTS

— The Faribault Journal in April 1924 reported that E.A. Dunlop had been appointed manager of “the new summer resort” at Circle Lake. His duties were to include “laying out of golf course, tennis courts and other recreational features.” I researched but could find no mention of a Dunlop significantly associated with Minnesota golf (no, tying it to the golf manufacturing giant does not count).

— Robert Palmquist, who lives on Circle Lake’s north shoreline, passed along some nuggets via email. He said an old road, about 5 to 6 feet wide, led from the eastern lakeshore to the golf course area. He surmised that’s where the golf course clubhouse would have been. I don’t think a clubhouse ever was built, but it makes sense that the road led to where one might have been – near the first tee of the golf course.

— Palmquist noted where the foundations of an old building are located, near the southeast corner of the island. :I was told by old-timers that it was a granary for feeding cattle that were left to roam on the island during the summers,” Palmquist wrote. “It was also where two people took refuge during the Armistice Day Blizzard in 1940 when their small boat capsized and they were stranded on the island for the night -– they buried themselves in the grain to keep warm.”

“In 2000,” Palmquist wrote, “there was a very brief effort to restart the golf course. 9 holes on the island and 9 holes to the north on a property now called ‘Maple Shores.’ The idea was homes would be built around nine holes in the Maple Shores portion, and a pontoon boat would ferry people to the island for the ‘back nine’ of the course.” The proposal never went beyond discussion, Palmquist wrote.

More photos on both courses will be published on a separate post.

Lost courses, or just my imagination?

Golf history, Lost golf courses,

Ben Hogan, asked about his indefatigable search to hone the perfect golf swing, famously replied, “I dug it out of the dirt.”

Props to you, Ben. We can dig it, though certainly not to your level (four U.S. Opens, two PGAs, two Masters, one British Open). Matter of fact, for most of us pedestrian double-digit sloggers, the concept of digging it out of the dirt generally has to do with stubbing an L-wedge two inches behind the intended point of impact and propelling the ball four feet forward.

Carrying the concept over to Minnesota’s lost golf courses, digging also produces mixed results. For instance, I searched, often exhaustively, over years even, and still sometimes came up with no answers to this existential question: Was there a golf course there or not?

With 233 Minnesota lost courses now identified, I’m turning to a group of maybes. That is, maybe there was a golf course there, maybe there wasn’t. In many cases, I’d bet there was, but I could just never confirm it.

I know there are people who know about some of these places. I’d love to be hear from them.

Digging in:

St. Louis Park: It’s been close to 10 years since an e-mailer wrote that a relative had told her of a golf course owned by Jean Pierre Butte (aka John Peter Hill, she wrote) on land “approximately located in St. Louis Park between Brunswick Avenue South to the west, Cedar Lake Road to the south, 16th Street West to the north, and beyond Zarthan Avenue South to the east.” The e-mailer offered no other details.

A decade later, I remain puzzled.

I believe that land would now be in the vicinity of Park Place Plaza, where there is a Home Depot and a Costco, or possibly a block or three west of that. I searched newspaper archives and a smattering of old St. Louis Park and Minneapolis city directories and came up with no evidence of such a course.

The aerial photo below shows this area in 1937. After that date and to the present, there is much more residential and apparently commercial development. The road at the top is what is now I-394; the road at the bottom that crests to the north is Cedar Lake Road. When I look for lost golf courses in aerial maps, there are two telltale signs: clear patterns of fairways, and small white dots that indicate sand greens. I see a couple of such dots in this photo — not the  larger, horizontal ovals near the top — but I doubt they were golf-course greens.

From University of Minnesota’s John Borchert Map Library

Big Lake: From a note copied from a newspaper issue of July 31, 1924 — I failed to mark the exact source but I suspect it was the Sherburne County Star News — I have this:

“Engineer FW Nickerson this week has completed a plat of the Thomas farm on the west shore of Lake Mitchell at Big Lake. … The plat includes some nice lake shore lots and a proposed golf course back from the lake. The course will extend back across the Elk River, which should make it more attractive.”

An aerial photo from 1938 shows no signs of a golf course.

Duluth: A couple of years ago, a man in the east Metro told me about a course that used to be where the Miller Hill Mall is now. I spent almost 16 years in Duluth one winter’s day no that’s a joke starting in 1981 and never heard of such a place, but the man lived in Duluth, knew his golf, and I bet he was right. (I’m almost certain he wasn’t referring to the lost Maple Grove Golf Acres course just up the road in Hermantown.)

Hollandale: A story in the Albert Lea Tribune of May 2, 1931, which went into detail about the establishment of the long-lost Recreation Course in that city (“Albert Lea, Part II: A little recreation, a little history”) also mentioned plans for a course to be built that summer at Hollandale, 11 miles to the northeast of Albert Lea. No other details were offered, and I never found evidence the course was built.

Lake Wilson: Also stumbled across a reference to this Murray County city and an impending establishment of a golf course in the April 27, 1930, Minneapolis Star Tribune:

“Dr. Stanley S. Chunn has been elected president of the newly organized Lake Wilson Golf club, and G. A. Swenson will serve as the first secretary. A number of sites for the course are under consideration and selection will be made soon.”

That sent me to archives of the Lake Wilson Pilot. Seventeen days earlier, the Pilot reported that an organizational meeting for a golf and possibly tennis club would be held. And on April 17, a Pilot story was headlined, “Lake Wilson Again Will Have Golf Links.” (The “Again” in the headline is intriguing — did Lake Wilson have a course before 1930?)

The latter story said a $5 membership fee had been established, and that “a number of sites” were being considered for the golf course. But I never found evidence that a course ever was built.

Janesville: As it relates to the headline in this post, Janesville apparently falls under “just my imagination.”

A July 3, 1927, story about a tournament for the Southern Minnesota Golf Association mentioned this city as a member club. Janesville was not listed as an association member in stories I found from 1926 and 1932. The city’s current course, Prairie Ridge, is near the northwestern corner of town, and was established in 1995, according to Internet entries.

An aerial photo from 1938 shows land just to the west east of the city limits and I believe bordering what is now Old Highway 14 to the south, with patterns that conspicuously look like hole routings on a golf course. See below, courtesy of the Borchert Map Library.

These patterns had blended into the surrounding area in aerials from 1951, suggesting the course had closed by then.

Someone in Janesville surely knows about this. I don’t know anyone in Janesville. But the Waseca County Historical Society was kind enough to have searched newspaper archives and talked to a few of the locals, and nobody knew about a Janesville course predating Prairie Ridge.

So, no lost golf course at Janesville. Somebody prove me wrong. Please.

Battle Lake: I thought I had a bead on this area seven or eight years ago. Now the bead has been turned into a blob — a faded blob in my memory banks.

Someone told me of cross country ski trails that wound through part of Glendalough State Park, just northwest of Battle Lake. I looked at historic aerial photos and at one time thought I spotted a surefire golf course routing, maybe on the south shore of Lake Blanche, but now I’m not finding it.

Also, the Minneapolis Tribune ran a classified ad on June 3, 1973, advertising a “proposed golf course” at a Chippewa Island resort on East Battle Lake. Have to say I’m clueless on that as well.

Update, 2024: A Glendalough Park employee has told me that previous owners of the land plotted two or three holes onto the site. Hence, not a lost golf course. Got to have at least five holes for me to consider it a golf course.

Dawson: The Dawson Golf Club website and other Internet entries place 1928 as the year the course was established in the small Lac qui Parle County city. I know of two newspaper references to Dawson Golf Club having played in competitions against other clubs in the area, in 1922 and ’23. Perhaps a lost course in town before the current one came along? I have no idea, but it wouldn’t be even remotely unheard of.

Montevideo: Two golf courses in this western Minnesota city at one point? I’m not sure. GolfLink, a website that posts generally reliable info on courses’ years of establishment, says River Crest in Montevideo (formerly The Crossings, presumably a different name even before that) was established in 1923. Got it so far. The plot thickens, though, when I see a Minneapolis Star story from June 14, 1932, that mentions a Minnesota Valley Golf Association tournament to be played at Montevideo Golf club. Among clubs participating would be “… Monte-Sota Golf club of Montevideo and the Montevideo Golf club.”

In May 1930, a Minneapolis Sunday Tribune story mentioned the same two golf clubs — same city, different clubs. And a Monte-Sota Golf Club of Montevideo was incorporated on May 10, 1930, according to papers presumably held by the Minnesota Secretary of State.

I see only four Monte-Sota references, none dating past 1934.

I can’t account for what to me looks like two golf clubs (albeit maybe not courses) in the same city.

Belle Plaine: “Tri-City Golf Club Planned,” read a small headline on a one-paragraph story in the Tribune of March 31, 1929. “Plans are under way here for the organization of the Tri-City Golf club, membership of which will be drawn from Belle Plaine, Jordan and New Prague,” read the item.

I poked around aerial photos of the Belle Plaine area from the 1930s and saw no golf course.

Clearbrook: I never found confirmation of a golf course in this city 30 miles northwest of Bemidji, but I found newspaper clips from 1930 and 1933 saying a Clearbrook club would play at a Red River tournament at Crookston, and mentions of Wayne Randall and Hardine Anderson of Clearbrook playing in area tournaments.

There are at least a dozen other places not mentioned here in which I found hints of courses abandoned or planned that aren’t listed on my map or mentioned in my writings. Off the top, I can think of Adrian, Aitkin (15 miles west of town, an old golf guide said) and Gilbert (not the Eveleth or Eshquaguma courses, as far as I could tell). At this point, I’m just about prepared to leave it at that, unless someone reading this or other postings can (please?) tell me more.

Cheers.

Building toward 240: Lake Harriet, Lake Pepin again

Golf history, Lost golf courses

The addition of I’m-saying-it-was-a-golf-course-Weequah Country Club last week takes us up to 232 known lost golf courses in Minnesota (see map, but don’t forget to come back here). Where will it end?

It won’t.

As sure as there are more than a thousand islands in the Thousand Islands (there are more than 1,800, Wikipedia says), there are more than 232 lost golf courses in Minnesota. I’d say 250 for sure, maybe close to 300. Maybe more.

The hard-core side of my search for lost courses in Minnesota has closed, with 232 layouts such as Roadside and Red Lake Falls and Rush City in tow. After a decade of tracking, I have backed way off.  But I’ll be glad to identify, maybe even write about, any more that turn up.

In the meantime, there are contenders and pretenders that I’m for now leaving by the side of the road (Roadside, get it?). Some are for-sure lost courses that I just don’t know enough about to add to the list, and some may be just products of imagination.

Here are a couple. Opinions and evidence always welcome:

Lake Harriet Golf Club

An entry in the Harper’s Official Golf Guide of 1901, under the Minnesota section, reads:

“LAKE HARRIET GOLF CLUB — Organized, September, 1900. A nine-hole course. Principal members, Frank L. Schoonmaker, Judge Andreas Deland, A.S. Keyes, J.H. Eschman, Hector Baxter, John Larrimore, and Mayor Gray.”

The 1902 Harper’s Guide also listed the Lake Harriet club, though detailing only the founding date and number of holes.

The only other reference I could find to this club came in 1904, with a Sept. 11 Minneapolis Tribune story noting an undelivered package addressed to “Secty. Lake Harriet Golf Club” being held by the Minneapolis post office, with instructions for claiming. As tempting as it is to zip over there and try to claim contents of the package — a shiny new brassie, perhaps? — the story also advised that “If not called for in two weeks letters are sent to the  dead letter office, Washington D.C.” And it just seems too much of a hassle to run over to the D.C. office and look for a package that might not be there 117 1/2 years later.

Regardless, it’s clear there was a golf club based in the Lake Harriet area, in the southwestern portion of Minneapolis. Whether there was a golf course associated with the club, though the golf guide entries strongly suggests it, I don’t know — and I have spent hours trying to figure it out.

Among the principals mentioned above, from what I can briefly gather,  Schoonmaker was a Minneapolis city councilor, Eschman a Lake Harriet concessionaire, Baxter a railroad president and a member of the Linden Hills Improvement Association, and “Mayor Gray” was James Gray, 18th mayor of Minneapolis, elected 1898. I could not find any other particular connections to golf among these men.

Incidentally, other Minnesota golf courses/clubs listed in the 1901 guide — named and spelled as they were in the guide — were Albert Lea (“we understand a golf club is about to be organized here”), Camden Place (this was the Camden Park Golf Club in north Minneapolis), Northland Golf Club of Duluth, an unknown course in Duluth “located west of the Mesaba Railroad, between Superior and West Third streets,” Faribault Golf Club (also known as Tatepaha), Bryn Mawr Golf Club of Minneapolis, Lafayette Club of Minnetonka Beach, Minikahda Golf Club of Minneapolis, St. Cloud Golf Club (not the same as St. Cloud Country Club), Merriam Park Golf Club of St. Paul, Roadside Golf Club of St. Paul and Town And Country Club of St. Paul, and Meadow Brook Golf Club of Winona.

Lake Pepin Country Club

I am adding this place to my list, calling it lost course No. 233, after flopping around like a boated Mississippi River smallmouth regarding this site and after brooking no small personal embarrassment.

After hearing in 2016 about a place called Lake Pepin Country Club, I declared to some that it was a lost golf course — only to spout a smart-mouthed rebuttal months later. That rebuttal is at this link, at once smarmy and enlightening as to the club’s foundations and, in the end, as misguided as a JFK Junior reincarnation party on a Dallas street.

I’ll not go into great detail about Lake Pepin CC, which lay two miles northwest of downtown Lake City, near the current site of Hok-Si-La Municipal Park and Campground. Click on the link above to learn more. But the Lake Pepin CC pamphlet that is posted there, which suggests a golf course would be built on site after the club’s founding in 1910, plus a Winona Republican-Herald story from Oct. 4, 1910, that suggested the same — “golf links through the shaded woods,” with a clubhouse to be built in 1911 — offered hints of a layout in the making.

“Hints” and “in the making,” however, do not constitute certain evidence of a lost golf course. But this does, if you ask me:

“Entertained at Red Wing,” read the title of a one-paragraph entry in the Winona Daily Republican-Herald of May 29, 1911, followed by the big reveal:

“The Moline houseboat party which was in Winona last week was entertained at the golf links at the Lake Pepin Country club on Friday on the way down the river.”

That’s the entirety of the entry, which I stumbled upon just today, but it clearly establishes Lake Pepin CC as a lost golf course. My smart-alecky November 2016 self has been duly upbraided, trust me. And another entry has been added to my list and map. That makes 233 lost courses.

For what it’s worth, 1913 was the final year of operation for Lake Pepin Country Club.

Photo at top of post: Early autumn, looking south down Lake Pepin and the Mississippi River from the Hok-Si-La Campground north of Lake City. The Lake Pepin Country Club (though not necessarily its golf course) presumably was situated on or near this spot.

Next post: More maybe-yes, maybe-no lost courses.

Looking south, toward Lake City and the lower Lake Pepin, from the Hok-Si-La beach.

From a trail on the north side of Hok-Si-La (note very small dork at far right searching for an old fairway he’ll never find). Katie Bissen Zaffke photo – also the flower below.

Weequah, St. Paul: Golf, or just boats and such?

Golf history, Lost golf courses, ,

During a decade of searching for lost golf courses, I’ve found a few. Well, it isn’t fair to say I found them, because, as anonymous as they might be 100 years later, they were of course known about by someone, somewhere, sometime. And I just pieced together spare parts for the purpose of telling a story.

The best example I can think of is Silver Creek in Rochester, a century-old lost course that as far as I can figure was known to only a handful of Minnesotans before it was uncovered to some degree in a March 2017 post on this site. It was a historically important course, to boot.

But as an unknown or virtually unknown place, Silver Creek is just the tip of a lost-course iceberg.

As of the moment I’m writing this, there are 231 entries on my list-slash-map of Minnesota’s lost golf courses, viewable here. I’d guess there are 50 to a hundred more that I don’t know about. Maybe more.

Then there are places I know about, but I don’t know for sure whether an organized golf course ever existed there.

Weequah, for instance.

Golf near the shores of Lake Phalen in St. Paul predates 1925. Phalen Golf Course was the city’s first public course, established in 1917 near the lake’s western shore. Judging by aerial photographs and one close-up (below), the current verdant and tree-lined Phalen GC doesn’t look a lot different than it did in its early years, save for the sand greens.

Phalen Golf Course postcard photo, likely dating to the 1920s or early ’30s.

Less than a mile east of Phalen GC, across the neck of of Lake Phalen, lay home base for the Weequah Canoe Club.

“At 1492 East Shore Drive is the clubhouse of the Weequah Canoe Club, built in 1924 by Swedish businessmen,” wrote Donald Empson in his book “The Street Where You Live: A Guide to the Place Names of St. Paul.”

Empson continued: “A few years later, after establishing a golf course, it became the Weequah Country Club; today it is a private residence.”

A golf course on the east side of Lake Phalen? Never heard of such a thing. Nor had the handful of people I talked to about it.  Nor could I find a reference to golf at Weequah in online searches of newspaper archives, nor in a one-hour search (that’s certainly not expansive) of St. Paul Pioneer Press and Dispatch archives from the mid-1920s. (I would have looked harder, but those newspapers are archived at the Minnesota History Center, which because of the pandemic I visited that one and only time in 2021, and I have no plans to return soon. Also, note updates at the bottom of this post.)

The Weequah Canoe Club dates to 1913 or before, that date being the earliest reference I could find online. The club participated in rowing events on Lake Phalen and beyond. As for whether golf  was ever played onsite, understandable skepticism was offered last year by the man who lives at the St. Paul address of the former Weequah Canoe Club and who owns background knowledge.

The Weequah club “had a locker room, Bar & Grill, Pool Table, and a large dance floor that led out onto the veranda port hall,” wrote William Zajicek in an online message. “They also had a tennis court and a golf club but to the best of our knowledge used the golf course across the lake in Phalen Park.”

That’s a perfectly logical supposition, though it pits Zajicek’s understanding (no golf course on the Weequah grounds) against Empson’s (yep and fore!).

Zajicek suggested in a subsequent message that he suspected the area surrounding Weequah at that time was not topographically fit for a golf course.

“The Weequah,” Zajicek wrote, “is built on a sand ridge that runs parallel to the lake shore starting at Arlington (Avenue) and going to the north toward a larger plateau. You can see the creek/drainage area behind the Weequah which led to the lake. The area to the east, I was told, required a good deal of fill before it could be developed in the ’50s.”

I’m not going to profess to know more about the surroundings than Zajicek. No way. But I’ll assert that a lot of golf courses, from living to long-expired, have been built on land not well-suited for golf. Notably among Minnesota lost courses,, there was the old Memorial Field course in Mankato, which briefly operated in a veritable swamp in the late 1930s.

Back to Weequah … aerial photographs also make me wonder.

From John Borchert Map Library digital files, University of Minnesota

The photo above shows Lake Phalen and the area to the east in 1923. The Weequah club, if I understand correctly, was along the road on the eastern shore — I believe near the bright-white spot where the road turned from directly north-and-southbound to a more diagonal angle. The suggestion is that the immediately surrounding land, including the creek that can be seen in the photo, was low-lying and not conducive to golf. That likely is true. But north of that, and east of the creek (in the right-center area of the photo), lies an area dotted with trees. It wouldn’t have been exactly out the backdoor of the Weequah Club but would have been only a few hundred steps from it. I swear it’s not outlandish to visualize tree lines between which golf fairways could have lain. I ran this theory past someone familiar with the look of old golf courses in historic aerial photos, and he didn’t see it as I did. But I haven’t wavered. I’m also thinking this spot of lightly wooded land was on higher ground than what’s to its southwest, and would have been about the right size for five to nine golf holes.

For purposes of modern-day context, I’m suggesting this this “golf-able” land would have been just west of the thin, light vertical line on the aerial photo, which I believe is now the Bruce Vento Regional Trail and originally was the St. Paul and Duluth Railroad. English Street runs nearby and close to parallel. Today, this is a residential area, near Hoyt and Idaho avenues and Chamber Street.

I know little else about Weequah, whether as canoe club, country club (i.e. with golf course) or just plain club-club. A 1922 Minneapolis Star story reported there were about 220 members. The latest reference I could find to it being an existing club came in 1940. A 1924 entry in “Minnesota and Its People” listed St. Paul dentist Daniel O. Ostergren as a Weequah Club member, “fond of fishing, motoring and playing golf.”

As with other places I’ve heard about over the years, I’ve left it up to — well, me, a committee of one — to decide whether a place in question is a lost golf course or just a slice of fiction. (If I’m the only one who cares, be that as it may.) So I have to render my own verdict, and I’ll do that with Weequah:

I’m saying, on admittedly thin evidence, there once was an organized golf grounds at Weequah. And I’m calling it a lost golf course — No. 232 on the list.

As always, feel free to enlighten or correct me if you have knowledge, or just want to speculate, or just want to call me a crackpot. I can take it.

Next: a few other venues I’m not sure about. I had planned to include them here, but I grossly exceeded my entirely mythical word-count limit.

Update, Jan. 29, 2022: I have received two items that shed light on Weequah, though they don’t solve the mystery of whether there was a course on the grounds.

The first is a display of Weequah golf champions, passed along by the aforementioned William Zajicek. To my surprise, it covers the years 1921 to 1937, a much longer period of time than I suspected the golf club existed, and now it suggests to me that there might not  have been a course on the site, if it lasted that long while the surrounding area began to see more residential development.

Courtesy of William Zajicek

Below is an aerial photo of the area in 1940, again from the Borchert Library website. Yes, residential development had begun, notably along English Street, but the area remained mostly devoid of buildings.

The other item is an entry in “Tee Party on the Green,” a 1925 publication that covered goings-on in Minnesota golf. On the “Twin Cities Miscellany” page, an entry mentioned that “Karl Karlson led the qualifiers in the Weequah Country club’s annual championship golf tournament with a net score of 140 for the 36 holes.” Interestingly, other Miscellany entries mention tournaments played by civic organizations or groups, but those always mentioned at which course the event was played. The Weequah entry included no such caveat, such as “played at the Phalen links,” thus suggesting Weequah had a layout of its own.

In any event, Weequah remains largely a mystery to me.

More golf, fewer losses; Forest Lake origins

Lost golf courses

2021 was a banner year for Minnesota golf courses. For lost courses? Not so much.

Cumulatively, that’s a very good thing.

Regarding the former, Minnesotans played a lot of golf in 2021. And then they played more. A December news release by the Minnesota Golf Association set the increase in rounds played across the state at 6.9 percent for the year, with 1.6 million rounds played by MGA members alone. That’s on the heels of a 2020 season in which rounds surged upward by 31.5 percent, driven largely by pandemic restrictions placed on other outdoor activities.

A residual effect from the past two years? Fewer lost golf courses. I can’t unequivocally say that one phenomenon (more golf) contributed to the other (fewer lost courses), but the connection seems obvious. As far as I know, only two Minnesota courses permanently shut down in 2021: The Ponds at Battle Creek in Maplewood (established 2004) and Rich Valley in Rosemount (pictured below, established 1998). It’s entirely possible there were more, though, and if you know of others, please let me know, if only so I can keep my lost-course map and list of courses that have closed since 2000 as up to date as possible.

Rich Valley Golf Course, Rosemount, October 2021, weeks before permanent closure. The course had been in the Ray Rahn family since its inception in 1998. The family also designed and established Parkview in Eagan (now a lost course) and Fountain Valley in Farmington, which was sold in 1980. Sadly, it was reported on Rich Valley’s Facebook page that some pathetic soul or souls made off with a handful of Rich Valley’s tee markers in the club’s final month. The family deserves to have them back, so ‘fess up.

That the roll of Minnesota lost courses grew by only two is significant. The trend toward losing courses left and right, north and south, hill and valley, has slowed appreciably. Two more in 2021 makes for a total of 85 since 2000. But the 2021 total was a small increase, and if you ask me, it signals the slowing of a market correction that began shortly after 2000, when it became clear the course-building boom of the 1990s had oversupplied Minnesota with golf venues, and nearly two decades of shuttering began.

Self-reflection

On a personal note, 2021 was my slowest year in golf since I was about 6, i.e. 171 years ago. When I was 7, when my dad sawed off a hickory-shafted 2-iron, wrapped electrical tape around the shaft (what other kind of tape would an electrician use?) and handed it to me, and off I went. My previous posts on this blog this year total exactly one. Two reasons: One, after spending a decade identifying, researching and writing about 231 lost courses in one state alone, I am left feeling a bit spent on the subject; and two, because of the pandemic, access to the Minnesota History Center, where I have done most of my research since about 2016, has been severely limited (only one visit this year).

I will, however gladly pass on a few nuggets from 2021, in this post and the next.

Forest Lake origins

Erik Espe of Baxter, a keen Minnesota golf history aficiando, passed along the photo below, inscribed “Picnic of the First National Bank of St. Paul, and Affiliated Institutions. Lakeside Country Club, Forest Lake. July 17, 1929.” (Click on the image for a closer look.) He wondered if I had any familiarity with the place, and I answered that I had little certain knowledge.


Some digging revealed a few details, albeit not a complete story. Spoiler alert: This place is not a lost course.

To amplify Espe’s inquiry, what and/or where was Forest Lake Country Club?

I knew that the consensus of citations on the origins of golf in Forest Lake place Castlewood, a nine-hole public course not far off the south shore of Forest Lake, as having been established in the 1920s, and Forest Hills Golf Club, an 18-hole private just a half-mile to the southeast, as established in 1962.

The Forest Hills opening date is essentially not in dispute, though I’ve seen claims of  starting dates as early as 1958 and as late as 1968 (and the club’s website doesn’t really help, considering its “Our History” tab features no information). But it isn’t Forest Hills that captures my particular interest. It’s Forest Hills’ northern neighbor that does.

Castlewood, also known today as “The Rock,” was established in 1920, according to the club’s website. There are, however, multiple sources that claim starting dates of 1925 or 1927. Here is where I issue a large caveat and asterisk: Without access to the History Center and local newspaper archives, I can’t say for sure which year is correct — if either.

But I can guess, and I’m guessing 1927 is the best guess. Among websites listing that starting date, GolfLink gets a shout-out from me.

I conducted searches of online Minnesota newspaper archives, most prominently the Minneapolis Tribune and Minneapolis Star, and could not come up with a reference to a golf course in Forest Lake in 1925 or before. When I reset the search parameters to 1930 or before, there were many results, including this:

“Forest Lake Club  to Open Nine-Hole Course Next Month,” read the headline in the Minneapolis Tribune of April 13, 1927.

Text from the story: “The course, situated on the south short of Forest lake, was begun under the promotion of J. M. Hegge last year when fairways were graded and seeded. Work of installing sand greens is under way and is expected to be completed within 30 days. Grass greens will be substituted as soon as practicable.

“A $100,000 club house has been built and several cottages are provided for vacationists. Barney Carlson, former pro at Phalen, will have charge of the course.”

This is not to say there couldn’t have been a golf course on the Castlewood site or elsewhere in Forest Lake before 1927, but the Tribune story suggests that is the year organized golf was first played in the city.

In the Tribune story, the reference to the clubhouse is telling. A hundred grand would have bought you a lot of clubhouse in 1927, a lot more than, say, a shack with a rusty mower, a cooler full of ale and sarsaparilla, a card table and three rickety chairs. Look again at Espe’s photo, and you get what most certainly was your $100,000 clubhouse along the shore of Forest Lake (a body of water is visible in the photo’s background).

As for the reference to Lakeside Country Club? The Tribune of April 21, 1929, enlightens:

“The Lakeside Country club at Forest Lake, operating a public course for the past two seasons, will be opened April 27 as a private club. The nine-hole course which measures 3,555 yards is in excellent condition, witht (sic) fine fairways and grass greens. The club has a membership of 350.”

Further digging revealed a smattering of newspaper stories about the golf course and considerably more about the clubhouse. It was variously referred to as Forest Lake Town & Country Club,  Lakeside Golf Club and Forest Lake Country Club. A 1930 Tribune story said it was an 18-hole course; entries in 1938 and 1940 newspapers called it a nine-holer.

As for the clubhouse, it hosted many get-togethers, to wit:

— A “Les Sept” outing (no, I don’t know what that is either) was held at Lakeside Country Club, with golf and swimming, according to the Minneapolis Tribune of Aug. 12, 1929.

— The Tribune ran multiple short items on Lakeside Country Club from 1929-31, including  references in 1930 and 1938 to an 18-hole golf course. Most items publicized picnics and civic or business gatherings. A June 1940 Star-Journal story reported the course was nine holes. The club was owned from 1933-51 by Edward Langan of St. Paul, according to a Tribune story.

— And Lakeside / Forest Lake Country Club was no modest clearing in the woods. A story in the Minneapolis Tribune off June 6, 1930, reported on a picnic that featured 2,000 Elks (not the antlered variety; they would have caused extensive damage) and families from Minneapolis. St. Paul, Stillwater and Hudson. Activities included dancing, vaudeville and card games.

That is as far as I’m willing to go with writing about Lakeside / FLCC, at least for now.  At some point, the course was renamed Castlewood, which remains its name today. I made inquiries about the club’s origins and history during late summer 2021 and thought I might receive more information, but that never happened. I will gladly post any comments on the club’s history, either in the comments section on this post or on a separate post.

Happy new year. Next: Unsolved mysteries, and a few odds and ends.