Puzzle pieces are all that remain of many of Minnesota’s lost golf courses.
But sometimes, even when pieces are missing, one finds a tidy little frame to hold things together.
A couple of weeks ago, I came across one old newspaper ad and one story that featured graphics showing the routing of two lost courses I wrote about in my first book, “Fore! Gone.” The courses were Antlers Park Golf Links (1925-38) in Lakeville and Hilltop Public Golf Links (1926-46) in Columbia Heights.
The newspaper items don’t offer much “new” information beyond what I wrote a decade ago, but I had never seen the Antlers Park routing displayed this clearly, and the Hilltop item is interesting on multiple fronts.
First courses first …
Antlers Park Golf Links was part of the highly popular Antlers Amusement Park, alongside the southeastern shore of Lake Marion in southern Lakeville. The ad shown here was published in the Minneapolis Tribune of June 28, 1925. The course’s first tournament was held two weeks later. The first hole headed west, the second returned east, and the rest of the nine roughly went out-and-back to the west, then back to the clubhouse, along what is now Kenwood Trail. The last hole was the longest, a par 5 of 380 yards (yes, par 5, 380). The open area in the bottom-left portion of the diagram would have been Lake Marion.
Though some available information is contradictory, it is almost certain Antlers Park was expanded to 18 holes in the 1930s. A former land owner told me there were notions — they likely never materialized — to add still nine more holes.
The Tribune ad states the course’s yardage as 2,500. A formal 18-hole scorecard from the 1920s states the yardages as 2,310 for the first nine and 2,190 for the second nine, for a total of 4,500.
Antlers Park Golf Links, Lakeville, 1925-38
Below is an aerial photo of the Antlers Park grounds from 1938, presumably from the golf course’s final year of existence. The road at the bottom of the photo is what is now 202nd Street Northwest. The prominent diagonal highway is Kenwood Trail, which was the northern and eastern border of the golf grounds. Part of the grounds today is Antlers Park Beach; most of it is residential development on the north side.
Many of the hole routings and greens are easily seen in this aerial photo.
Image from University of Minnesota’s John Borchert Map Library.
Antlers Park was one of Minnesota’s first privately owned, daily-fee courses, perhaps preceded only by Orono Public Golf Course in 1924. (I believe a club in northern Minnesota makes a similar claim, though the club’s history that I own suggests otherwise, and some Brainerd Lakes-area courses also might say the same.)
There are three “schools” of golf course design: strategic, heroic and penal. Let’s skip the first two. Why? Because.
Penal design, to paraphrase the website Fried Egg Golf, means there’s a lot of stuff that can get in the way of your ball. Fried Egg defines penal design this way: “There is a right way to play a hole. Hit the required shots, which are typically straight down the middle, and get rewarded. Errant shots are punished proportionate to the degree of err.”
Visitors to Adolph Naeseth’s golf course discovered that the hard way.
Naeseth (pronounced Nesseth) established a tree-lined golf course in 1925 on his farm in Wanamingo Township, Goodhue County, about 25 miles northwest of Rochester. Michelle Knutson, member of a prominent golfing family in nearby Zumbrota, in 2007 posted to Ancestry.com a recollection titled “A little history of golf in Zumbrota.” Nearby Naeseth Country Club was included.
“He made his own course,” Knutson wrote of Naeseth. “It was a piece of land that had been used for pasture. There were many trees between holes 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. Holes 1, 8 and 9 were open.”
1938 aerial view of presumed grounds of Naeseth Country Club. The course, which lay halfway between the tiny towns of Hader and Aspelund, likely had shut down a few years earlier. The diagonal highway is Goodhue County 8, and 97th Avenue borders the course on the west. Hole routings are easy to envision among the open areas, and a handful of sand greens – small, round, white circles – are visible. Photo via University of Minnesota’s John Borchert Map Library. Photo at top of post: Adolph Naeseth, left. Courtesy of Gary Bakko.
In May 1926, golfers from Zumbrota, Lake City Golf Club and Naeseth CC met in Lake City for a competition. The hosts won, the Wanamingo Progress reported (no score was mentioned). Two months later, the Lake City club visited Naeseth’s property and, apparently not ready for penal prime time, played pinball among the hardwoods and was drubbed this time, 36-11 by the Naeseth club. Only six Lake City players out of 17 broke 100 over 18 holes. Naeseth shot the day’s low score, an 86.
The Progress declared the heavily wooded Naeseth course a “mental hazard” for the Lake City group and said it “proved a heavy handicap.” Months earlier, the Progress had called Naeseth CC “a tricky course to play.”
That September, Naeseth won his club championship, defeating someone the Progress identified only as “Dr. Knutson” (presumably Dr. Alfred Knutson of Zumbrota, member of the aforementioned golfing family) with a “record game” of 77-77–154. The Progress congratulated Naeseth for his skill “at the close of his third year of play.”
Well done, for sure, especially for a relative beginner. But it was by far not not the first time Naeseth had starred in an athletic endeavor.
In basketball, Naeseth was a standout at Luther College in Decorah, Iowa. He still shares the Luther school record for most field goals in a game, with 16 in 1907.
And in baseball, his achievements were legendary.
At Luther, Naeseth built pitching credentials that would land him in the school’s athletic hall of fame. In eight games against major college competition, according to his hall of fame profile, he won four times, lost twice and tied twice. Victories came over Minnesota, Wisconsin and Nebraska (twice). He struck out 21 batters in one 15-inning game and, as a senior, struck out three batters in the ninth inning with the bases loaded and no outs to secure a 1-0 victory over Wisconsin.
After graduation, Naeseth returned home to the family farm — his father, Ole K. Naeseth, had been a Minnesota state senator and representative — and played town baseball. One account lists him as having been signed by the St. Paul Saints but having his professional career cut short by an arm injury. An October 1922 entry in the Minneapolis Star noted Naeseth, pitching for Zumbrota, throwing a 12-inning no-hitter with 17 strikeouts and no walks in a game against Lake City.
“Naeseth has been offered a contract with the Chicago White Sox, but his parents have objected,” the Star reported.
In June 1934, Naeseth returned to the pitcher’s mound for the first time in more than a decade and, according to the Progress, “demonstrated that he has lost none of his cunning and little, if any of the control which elevated him to rank among semi-professional pitchers in a glorious and never-to-be-forgotten past.” Translation: He was an ace again. He had just pitched a five-hitter with 18 strikeouts in a Wanamingo victory. That August, in Wanamingo’s 14-9 victory over Hammond to clinch the River Valley League championship, Naeseth struck out 15 batters, running his strikeout total to 126 in 11 games.
He was 48 years old.
At his golf course, play continued into the 1930s, and not much longer. By 1927, Naeseth Country Club had taken on a new identity as Wanamingo Country Club. Newspaper stories mentioning the golf course became more scarce — the last one I could find was a July 1933 Redwood Falls Chronicle tale about a Minneapolis golfer losing his ball in a tree on the fourth hole, then on his second nine pumping another shot into the same tree, dislodging both balls.
Teeing off at Naeseth Country Club, 1928. Wanamingo resident Gary Bakko says this is the only known photo of the course.
Gary Bakko, who lives in Wanamingo and has chronicled some of the history of the city and area, was acquainted as a child with Naeseth. The Great Depression, Bakko presumed in a telephone interview, was the “death knell” for Wanamingo Country Club.
Adolph Naeseth died in 1965.
Notes
Naeseth’s daughter, Barbara, was listed as “golf champion of Goodhue County, 1931” in a 1956 family history written by Gerhard Brandt Naeseth, a well-known librarian and geneaologist and for whom a geneaological center and library at the University of Wisconsin is named.
In August 1926, the golfers of Naeseth Country Club traveled to Lakeville for a match against another club that is now long gone and largely unremembered. The Naeseth club lost by one stroke to Antlers Park. Naeseth was the medalist with an 81 and won three golf balls, according to the Wanamingo Progress.
The first president of Naeseth CC was H.E. Hanson of Zumbrota, elected in April 1925. Naeseth headed the rules and regulations committee and greens committee.
Naeseth CC is lost course No. 249 on my list of documented lost golf courses in Minnesota. Any numbering represents basically only the order in which I came upon the courses. No. 250 and more are surely out there. Drop me a note and tell me about another. Cheers. To view the lost-course map, go here: Minnesota lost course map
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.
In “Fore! Gone,” I included a brief entry on a presumed lost golf course in Lake City. A fellow who preferred to be left unnamed (strange phrase, as I think about it. If you already have a name, how can you go unnamed?) told me of a course that opened in 1927 on the south side of Lake City, on or near the National Guard grounds known as Camp Lakeview.
When the Guard came to Lake City to train for six weeks each summer, the fellow told me, “They couldn’t hardly golf there.”
Well, I have visual confirmation of the lost course.
The images are of a postcard I recently purchased. The postcard is dated April 4, 1930, on the back, and the inscription on the front reads, “Birds eye view of Lake City Minn. on Lake Pepin National Guard Camp and golf links on left. Arrow indicates location of tourist camp.”
I have driven past or near this spot a hundred times and had no idea there was a famed landmark (OK, famed only from my twisted point of view) there. A work colleague from the Lake City area confirms that this view would have been looking northwest, about two miles from downtown. I haven’t researched closely or come up with any details about this course, best guess is that it was named Lake City Golf Club, but it appears to me it would have been situated on what I see on Google Maps as Younger Coulee.
The inscription on the back of the card is notable to some lost-course degree. It concludes with this sentence: “New Golf course is one mile N. W. of city.”
That is presumably a reference to what is currently named Lake City Golf, situated just west of U.S. 61 northwest of town.
I have questions about the timeline involved with these two golf courses. I’m not going to definitively sort them out here because I have a hundred other things going on, including the two most vexing projects known to man: preparing tax returns and ridding a household of infernal mice.
Anyway, about the timeline:
— The man I interviewed in 2013 said the “National Guard” golf course was established in 1927.
— Most Internet entries state 1928 as the date of establishment for Lake City Golf Club.
— The postcard, as noted, mentions the establishment of a new course with a projected date of 1930.
— Newspapers generally offer more reliable details. The Winona Daily News frequently referenced Lake City Golf Club in the 1920s. One story said the course lay on the “parade grounds” of the National Guard camp. Another, from June 1924, states the club was in its second season.
— A March 1929 Minneapolis Tribune story says “Lake City’s new golf course will be formally opened around June 1.”
My best guesses are that Lake City Golf Club on the National Guard grounds was established in 1923 and moved to its site on the northwest side of the city in 1929.
I’ll leave it at that but welcome any comments offering details about the course, either site, and years.
Author’s note: New entries on this site have admittedly been sparse in recent months. Best excuse I can offer is that I’m working on a second book about Minnesota’s lost golf courses and plan to have it published sometime this year. Thanks for your interest.
The story of golf in the northern Minnesota city of Cass Lake does not start with an attempt to lure the U.S. president to town.
But a story has to start somewhere, so here we go …
On March 11, 1927, Henry George Bingham of St. Paul composed a letter, typewritten on paper carrying the letterhead of the St. Paul office of the Mutual Benefit Life Insurance Company, to M.N. Koll, secretary of the Cass Lake Commercial Club. Bingham, who owned a resort lodge on the western shore of Cass Lake, informed Koll that he had heard President Calvin Coolidge had been invited to spend his summer vacation in northern Minnesota — at the Woodhome Lodge, an hour southeast of Cass Lake on Roosevelt Lake near the city of Outing.
Bingham thought Cass Lake — and The Bingham, as his lodge was known — would be a superior presidential destination. He told Koll so in his letter and implored him to write to Coolidge, inviting him to Cass Lake for the summer.
The next day, Koll composed a letter that would soon be eastbound. Today, a copy of it rests in the archives of the Minnesota History Center. The letter began:
“Subject — Summer White House.
“My dear President:
“The late Edmund L. Pennington, had a summer home here for several years. He was the Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Minneapolis Saint Paul and Sault Ste. Marie Railway when he died about a year ago. It was sold to Mr. H.G. Bingham shortly afterwards by Mr. Pennington’s Estate.
“It is modern. It has very choice equipment. It is half a mile from the village limits. Has telephone, electric lights, $5,000.00 cabin launch suitable for the waters of the lake system here. Has an east frontage, fine bathing beach, stands on a bluff overlooking the lake facing the famous Star Island. Has equipment to care for over thirty guests. Has both separate lodges and sleeping rooms in the main building. Has a golf links adjacent. It is quiet. It is situated among the pines.”
Koll listed more Cass Lake organizations and assets, including the Consolidated Chippewa Indian Agency, and proclaimed that “we can lay claim to a high average of intellectuality in the community.” The sum total of the letter was to invite Coolidge to spend part of his summer at The Bingham.
Off the letter went to Washington, D.C.
Koll received acknowledgement of the letter’s arrival in correspondence dated March 15 and written on White House stationery. The White House’s reply was noncommittal.
But ultimately, no dice. On May 31, the White House formally announced, to great fanfare from Midwestern newspapers of the day, that Coolidge and his travel contingent — including his wife, Grace, and her pet porcupine, Betty — would spend their summer at Custer State Park in the Black Hills of South Dakota.
Cass Lake’s loss, Black Hills’ gain. Henry Bingham, Mathias N. Koll and Cass Lake Golf Club (Minnesota lost course No. 210) went on about their 1927 daily routines, sans the Coolidges and Betty.
In a sporting sense, perhaps it’s just as well. Silent Cal might not have enjoyed himself at Cass Lake Golf Club. “Coolidge played out of obligation and his game reflected it,” Golf Advisor reported in a 2014 story, “as he usually required double-digit shots on each hole.”
Advertisement, unknown newspaper, dated June 4, 1937.
CLUB ORIGINS
Cass Lake Golf Club’s nine-hole, sand-greens course had not yet begun its second season when Bingham and Koll composed their letters. The club was organized in 1925 and opened play on and near Bingham’s property in 1926. (Update, September 2024: I have just come across a Grand Rapids Herald-Review story from June 1923 that reported that Cass Lake was among cities in the area with golf courses. I have no information that confirms or expands on this, so I will leave it for now as originally written.)
“It has long been the desire of the people of Cass Lake Village,” read a Cass Lake Times article in July 1925, “to add to its many other attractions — golf grounds.”
A committee of 10 businessmen was formed to search for such grounds. A.C. Anderson of Hibbing, Minn., described as “a golf expert,” was invited to visit Cass Lake and offer opinions on a suitable tract. The decision was made by the newly formed Cass Lake Amusements Inc. to employ land on the “Sam Fairbanks Allotment,” as the Times put it, “or that part of this allotment that lies between the ‘Boat Landing Road’ the Soo Line railway and Cass Lake.”
“This is a beautiful round, rolling, covered with a vigorous second growth of timber, and having a splendid outlook upon Cass Lake, the several islands, the Minnesota National Forest and practically all of Pike Bay.”
Eat your heart out, Cal. And Betty.
Cass Lake Golf Club’s prehistory began with four holes that lay on the Bingham Lodge property before the club was organized. After the club organized on June 28, 1926, five more holes were built after the acquisition of adjacent land on what the Times referred to as “the Newsome property.”
If all of this is leading to the notion that Henry Bingham was the father of golf in Cass Lake, I’ll just say I don’t think that’s true.
I never found a connection between Bingham and the game of golf. But his predecessor on the lodge property, Pennington, well, that’s a different story.
Edmund Pennington was born in 1848 to an English father and Scottish mother. He rose through the railway ranks to become Soo Line president. In 1910, Pennington County in northwestern Minnesota was named for him. Pennington lived in Minneapolis’ prestigious Lowry Hill neighborhood, and his name is linked in published biographies with names such as Pillsbury and Bovey, both residents of Wayzata’s well-to-do Ferndale neighborhood. (Charles Bovey was a founder of Woodhill Country Club in 1915, and much of the entire Ferndale populace was connected to golf.)
Two other nuggets further connect Pennington to golf: The executor of his estate after his death in 1926 was one Clive T. Jaffray of Minneapolis, a founder of that city’s Minikahda Club and a frequent champion in the early years of Minnesota golf; and a 1923 biography of Pennington lists him as a member of both Minikahda and Duluth’s Northland Country Club.
I would bet a stringer of plump Cass Lake walleye that Pennington built four golf holes on his northern Minnesota estate before dying, after which Bingham became the land owner.
Summertime entries in the Cass Lake Times of 1926 tell of Cass Lake Golf Club’s preparations in building a course. On Sept. 2, 1926, the newspaper reported, “The first casualty on the Cass Lake Golf Links occurred last week, while Mr. and Mrs. C.W. Hough were playing. Mrs. Hough swung on the ball, (Cyril says it was the prettiest shot she has made this year) and Cyril admiring the shot didn’t move fast enough and the ball hit him in the eye, laying his cheek open.”
LOCATION … LOCATION?
If “close” counts only in horseshoes, hand grenades and finding lost golf courses, then I suppose I can take credit, because I can come close to pinpointing the site of the long-abandoned Cass Lake Golf Club.
But I can’t do better than that. If you want me to tell me exactly where the first tee was, or whether it was a long walk from the ninth green back to the clubhouse, not gonna happen.
The following is, I guess, equal parts facts and guesses, likelihoods and unlikelihoods, about Cass Lake Golf Club’s site:
— The Cass Lake Times story from 1925 identified the site as between the “Boat Landing Road,” the Soo Line railway and the city proper. That would be the northeastern part of town, possibly within the current city limits and possibly just outside.
— The Bingham is now Cass Lake Lodge, according to Cass County Museum records. But the boundaries of Bingham’s property — inside of which the four holes of his golf course were placed — are unknown. Best guess is that they were east west or more likely south of his lakeside lodge.
Unfortunately, old aerial photos are of no help. The University of Minnesota’s 1937 database has a gap in Cass County — Murphy’s Law at play here — just at the western edge of Cass Lake and does not show the land between the city and the lake, where the golf course was. Also, available historical plat maps do not directly identify owners of lots in the vicinity.
— Another 1925 story identified the golf course land as being north of the Soo Line railway and east of Boatlanding road. Efforts to identify this road resulted in possible conflicts. I received much-appreciated input from Cass Lake residents and former residents on a Facebook page, mostly leading to the assertion that the current Sailstar Drive is the Boatlanding Road — but a 1927 map of resorts in the area (I can’t publish it because I don’t have rights to it) doesn’t show any roads leading diagonally from the city to the lake, as Sailstar does today. So I still can’t positively identify the path of Boatlanding Road from the 1920s.
— I have no idea where the aforementioned “Sam Fairbanks allotment” was. Nor did any of the handful of people I mentioned it to.
— I did find two newspaper clips that, put together, appear to closely identify the site of the golf course. First, the Cass Lake Times of July 1, 1926, reported on the organization of a golf club, with Walter Minton as its inaugural president.
“Dues were set at $15 and fifty members have already pledged themselves.
“The course consists of the Bingham four hole course, now ready and the Newsome property to be teed up for a nine hole course.
“The club will lease these to properties for the present and the links will be ready for use in a short while.”
But where was the “Newsome property”? I was stuck on that detail until recently discovering a classified ad in the Minneapolis Tribune of April 26, 1926, notifying that the Highland Inn Resort was up for sale and that the land was being held by the Newsome Development Company of Cass Lake.
Today, Highland Park Lodge is about 550 yards southeast of Cass Lake Lodge — formerly the Bingham. It leads me to say my best guess is that the original Cass Lake Golf Club land lay close to those lodges, about a quarter-mile west of the lake, possibly on or near what is now 162nd Street Northwest and 60th Avenue Northwest, or about four blocks north of the Leech Lake Land of Ojibwe Tribal Office. That could be in conflict with the noted proximity to Boatlanding Road, and I can’t resolve that.
UPDATE: COURSE FOUND, I’M PRETTY SURE
Update, July 19, 2019: I have come across a 1939 aerial photo of the area between the city of Cass Lake and the lake itself, which I presume includes the Bingham Lodge. The photo is likely from the season after golf was played at this site, but the features wouldn’t have changed appreciably. I can’t identify all areas with certainty, but I am pretty sure this photo reveals the Cass Lake Golf Club site.
Photo is courtesy of the University of Minnesota’s John Borchert Map Library. I tried to keep markings to a minimum, but here are some guidepoints: B = Bingham Lodge; CL = Cass Lake (the lake); BR = Boatlanding Road; CL-C = Cass Lake (the city). I marked a few points with a green G. If you’re able to take a close look (clicking on the photo might help), you might see very small white circles that look very much like sites of golf courses’ sand greens.
RUNNING ITS COURSE
Cass Lake Golf Club operated on this site into the 1930s. In 1933, memberships cost $15 and greens fees were 50 cents. The club had an organizational meeting in April 1938, the Cass Lake Times reported, and an inter-club match was played against Bemidji in May 1938.
In 1939, Cass Lake Golf Club went through a significant change. I’ll let you know about that in my next post. In 1945, Henry Bingham sold his lodge to fellow St. Paul resident Davidson Burns, who renamed it The Burns. Carl and Freda Bixenstine bought the resort in 1952 and operated it until 1969. It operates today under the name Cass Lake Lodge.
Henry George Bingham, who worked at the Curtis and St. Paul hotels after selling his lodge, died in 1948. Seems a safe bet that he never met Calvin Coolidge nor witnessed what surely was the considerable hitch in his golf swing.
Photo at top of post is of Bingham Lodge, via lakesnwoods.com. Caption reads, “The Bingham Resort, Cass Lake Minnesota, 1940’s.” Thanks to the Cass County Museum and the Facebook group Children of Cass Lake MN for contributions to this post.
