Tag Archives: lost golf courses

The Lake Park Golf Club: St. Paul short-timer

Lost golf courses,

Snelling Avenue. You’ve probably heard of it. Main north-south artery for transportation on the western side of St. Paul. Traffic to rival that of a Martha’s Cookies stand as it rolls past the Minnesota State Fairgrounds.

Como Avenue. You’ve probably heard of it, too. If not, then you’ve probably heard of Como the lake (not the enormous one in Italy) or Como the golf course or Como the zoo. Como the avenue meets Snelling just south of the Minnesota State Fairgrounds, in the northwestern quarter of Minnesota’s capital city.

Now, about that golf course at Snelling and Como …

… There wasn’t one. But there was one darn close to it, almost a hundred years ago. And there was, to be fair, a golf club even closer.

I’m betting you never heard of either one.

The following entry in the 1923 American Annual Golf Guide tells us of the golf course and for all intents and purposes tells us where it was — unless you want to be picky, a right I reserve for myself a couple of paragraphs from now.

The Lake Park Golf Club, relatively small in stature and and as far as I can tell rather unremarkable in every other way, long ago and for maybe as little as one golf season occupied a thin, rectangular plot of land not quite at Como and Snelling but within a solid midiron strike of it.

Lake Park is Minnesota lost golf course No. 206. (The other 200-plus I have identified can be seen on my Google lost course map.)

Information on The Lake Park Golf Club is sketchy, beyond the confirmation that it did in fact exist. That can be found in the April 2, 1922, edition of the St. Paul Pioneer Press, within a short story about local indoor golf clubs shutting down for the season in advance of the outdoor season. (Indoor golf clubs in downtown St. Paul and Minneapolis were common in the 1920s.) The story mentioned “Carl Lindgren, who again this season will be at the Lakeview Golf club and Sig Hanson who will teach the game at the newly organized Lake Park golf club.”

To expand and then briefly retreat, all indications are that The Lake Park Golf Club was an arm of something called the Lake Park Club. Though I did find one mention of a Lake Park Commercial Club as early as 1915, the Lake Park Club is not listed in St. Paul city directories until 1922. Those entries were preceded by a mention in the Pioneer Press of Sept. 10, 1921, that the city council had granted “a license regulating the Selling and Handling of Foodstuffs” to six parties, including “Lake Park Club, Snelling and Como Aves.”

But I would bet Tiger Woods’ $20 million yacht if he only would cede it to me that Snelling and Como isn’t exactly where the golf course was. At least not the Como part of it.

A 1916 St. Paul plat map, the closest to 1922 that is readily available, shows a 38-acre parcel owned by Archibald Emerson that is bordered by Snelling Avenue on the west, Northern Pacific railroad tracks on the south, Hamline Avenue on the east and Wynne Street on the north. (Como Avenue is two blocks north of Wynne.)

University of Minnesota John Borchert Map Library plat map

The following two aerial photos of that parcel from 1923 are eminently revealing.

Aerial photos from University of Minnesota’s John Borchert Map Library.

The top photo shows the larger area near Snelling and Como, with part of the State Fairgrounds at the upper-left corner and part of Como Park on the right side. Snelling runs north-south through the entire left side of the photo. Como runs east-west, just above the midpoint of the photo. The presumed area of The Lake Park Golf Club is near the bottom-right-center of the photo.

The lower photo represents, I guess one would say, my Eureka! moment. Just north of the railroad tracks and east of Snelling is an area that I am 99 percent certain reveals a golf course. You might have to trust me on this, because I have looked at hundreds of old aerial photos of golf courses, and this parcel clearly shows fairway routing. Wynne Street is at the northern border of the golf grounds, with Breda Avenue one block north of that and Como one block north of Breda. (Note that the parcel just across Snelling to the west could be mistaken as fairway routings, but it almost certainly was a railroad switchyard.)

Click on either photo for a closer look. The bottom photo is pretty much a dead giveaway that a golf course was there. Driving around that area today, my impression is that there would have been room for a nine-hole golf course, albeit probably a short one.

The Lake Park Golf Club — assuming it was a private club — did not carry nearly the stature of St. Paul’s other private golf clubs. It received only a fraction of the coverage that was afforded by the Pioneer Press to the likes of Town & Country, Somerset, White Bear Yacht Club and Lakeview (renamed Hillcrest in 1923). Even the Phalen Park public course was mentioned more often.

But there were occasional nuggets. On April 7, 1922, the Pioneer Press listed Lake Park as one of nine members of the just-formed St. Paul Golf Association. On June 25, 1922, the newspaper reported that a St. Paul caddie tournament had been held, with Lake Park represented by Louie Rustad and Theodore Tupa. (Research shows a Theodore Tupa who was a Summit Avenue resident and bandleader in 1949.)

On June 4, the Pioneer Press reported that an open house would be held at Lake Park that day. The club, the newspaper said, “has not yet closed on its memberships. The fairways and greens are in splendid condition and plans are now underway for the completion of the club house.”

Whether the course survived into the 1923 season, I don’t know. Sharon Shinomiya of the Como Park Bugle graciously passed along this nugget to me, a passage from the St. Paul Daily News of April 1, 1923, in a story headlined “St. Paul Golf Clubs Prepare to Start Season Soon.”

“Chelsea Heights is the only course that is in doubt about having an instructor, but as golf pros are not lacking, it is probable that Chelsea Heights will have one also. This is the new course that was opened last year at Como …”

The Chelsea Heights reference surely was to the Lake Park course, which was — depending on whose hairs you care to split regarding geographical designations — in the Chelsea Heights or Tilden area of St. Paul’s Como neighborhood.

I found no other direct references to The Lake Park Golf Club in 1923 or beyond. By 1924, Sig Hansen (I believe this is the proper spelling of his last name) had become the new professional at Phalen Park. By 1928, the Archibald Emerson plot on which Lake Park golfers had played had been bought by Duluth & Virginia Realty Company of Minnesota, though the plot had not been commercially or residentially developed. Today, the old golf course land is occupied by the campus of Hmong College Prep Academy and apartment complexes, principally Como Park Apartments.

Former site of The Lake Park Golf Club, taken from Jessamine Avenue West at the southern edge of the former golf course grounds. Como Park Apartments are prominent on these grounds.
Near the southwestern corner of the former Lake Park golf grounds, on what is currently the campus of Hmong College Prep Academy.

A few other notes on the Lake Park Club:

The 1922 St. Paul City Directory lists Lake Park Club as being headquartered at 1200 North Snelling — the intersection of Snelling and Como. Sam Y. Gordon was president and Earl P. Buglass was secretary (a Samuel Y. Gordon was Minnesota’s lieutenant governor from 1911-13). In a 1923-24 city directory, the club’s listed address was 1450 Breda Avenue (one block north of the golf grounds), with Samuel Skoog as secretary. A 1925-26 directory lists Buglass as secretary and the club at “Snelling Av ne cor (corner) Como Av.”

Subsequent references in city directories are titled “Lake Park Commercial Club,” based at 1208 North Snelling, and begin in 1926, with George Sweeney as secretary. Property cards at the Ramsey County Historical Society include frequent entries from 1926 through 1936, with notations such as confectionery, dance hall, 2 pool tables, roller skate rink, and “on sale.” The final entry, from Sept. 8, 1936, lists the property as “Roller Skating.”

Today, there is no longer a building standing at 1208 Snelling Avenue North.

 

St. Paul Mysteries, Part I: There was a golf course named Lakeview?

Lost golf courses,

Presenting a Minnesota golf mystery. See if you can figure this out faster than I did. Only took me two years.

Spoiler alert: I’ll be giving away the answer a few paragraphs hence. I guess that’ll take the “mystery” out of play, but whatever.

—————-

Check out, from the Minnesota Golf Association’s archived membership rolls, this list of “St. Paul” golf clubs from 1921:

From Minnesota Golf Association  archives.

Refrain from geographical nitpicking, please, and scroll down to the final entry. (I’ll do the nitpicking — Midland Hills is in Roseville, White Bear Yacht Club is in Dellwood, Northwood was in North St. Paul, Somerset is in Mendota Heights. Something tells me the MGA didn’t feel the need to be geographically precise in those days, and that’s fine.)

OK, final entry in the photo:

Lake View Golf & Country Club (ditto marks indicating St. Paul).

Lake View Golf & Country Club? In St. Paul?

Never heard of it. What lake, what view, what golf, what country club? It was a mystery to me when in 2017 I was offered a look at the MGA archives and noticed the entry.

Care to take a stab at it?

There aren’t that many lakeside areas in or very near St. Paul, so some possibilities are easily eliminated. Lake View couldn’t have been tied to Phalen Park; that club was established in 1917 and is listed in the MGA membership roll pictured above. Lake View wasn’t tied to Como; that golf club’s course opened in 1930.

So … Lake View?

With other priorities in play, I set Lake View on the back burner for a year and change, though it would occasionally resurface to vex me. But I never could think of a golf course, extant or extinct, in St. Paul or within a few miles of it, that could have been called Lake View.

Twitter lent an unwitting hand in solving the mystery.

This February, while having a Twitter exchange with a golf historian on an unrelated issue, he tweeted to me this photo, taken from a page in the 1922 American Annual Golf Guide:

This was presumably the same club as Lake View in the MGA membership roll. Lake View (or Lakeview) Golf & Country Club, found!

Well, sort of. Except there really was no where there in the golf-guide entry. With my curiosity again piqued, I was off to the Minnesota History Center in search of Lakeview Golf & Country Club’s still-mysterious location. I struck gold (my gold standard is a low one) on one of the first microfiched sports sections I spooled up.

From the St. Paul Sunday Pioneer Press of May 1, 1921,  this (click on the image for a larger view):

“NEW GOLF COURSE WILL OPEN TODAY,” read the headline on the left side of the page.

“The Lakeview Golf & Country Club will entertain golfers of St. Paul today,” the story began. “… The Lakeview Club was organized by enthusiasts of the great Scottish pastime, who for the past two or three years have played on the Phalen municipal course. When the course became overcrowded , certain of its patrons decided to organize the Lakeview Club.

“An excellent strip of land in the northeast end of the city was purchased this spring and work on the first nine holes was started immediately. It is expected that before the close of the playing season that the limit of 200 members will have been …” (paragraph cuts off)

The rest of the article describes the course’s rolling terrain, elevated vantage points and various holes. Accompanying the story was a five-column map of the grounds and the routing. At the perimeters of the map are the giveaways. The course was bordered by Larpenteur Avenue on the north and Winthrop and East avenues on the west and east, respectively (East Avenue is now McKnight).

St. Paulites and many Minnesota golfers will recognize the description. Lakeview Golf & Country Club was what came to be known as Hillcrest.

More written history follows, but if you were familiar with Hillcrest Golf Club, you won’t want to miss the photo/map near the end of this post.

The history of Hillcrest Golf Club is mostly well-documented. It was best known as the east metro’s Jewish golf club for more than a half-century, although those Jewish roots were first established at nearby Northwood Country Club in North St. Paul, which opened in 1915. Northwood was abandoned in the 1940s, and some of its Jewish members soon purchased Hillcrest, which was a public course at the time. Hillcrest was sold to a local pipefitters union in 2011 and abandoned in 2017. Its grounds are now vacant.

But the genesis of Hillcrest — or Lakeview, at the start — is less well known. There are no club documents from its earliest years, I’ve been told, and the only mentions of the club before it was launched that I know of are the aforementioned 1921 reference to Phalen golfers seeking a valve for overcrowding and a reference in a Minneapolis Tribune story from the same year suggesting the new Lakeview club was private. But it isn’t impossible to cobble together a short history of Hillcrest-when-it-was-Lakeview.

The Pioneer Press of April 24, 1921, touted the impending start of the golf season. The headline: “St. Paul to Have Two New Golf Clubs Equaling Best in the West.” The first of these was University Golf Club, which soon would be renamed Midland Hills and, through the talents of noted golf architect Seth Raynor (identified as “Rayner” and “Raymore” in the Pioneer Press story), would indeed become a regionally prominent golf club.

The second club mentioned was Lakeview, and though as Hillcrest it also would become a golf course of distinction, it is unlikely, considering its staggering pace-of-construction timeline, that it began as one.

“Lakeview golfers believe they have set a record in course construction,” a note at the end of the April 14 story reads. “On April 6 work was started on the first ten holes of their new course in Hayden Heights, and on April 10, players used the course for the first time. The record seems a remarkable one. The remaining eight holes will be constructed soon.”

I never did track down under whose breakneck-paced guidance the routing, tree-stump pulling, grading, fairway canting, bunkering and greens swaling of Lakeview was first engineered (yes, that’s gentle sarcasm). However, those who have played Hillcrest will note that the routing shown in the 1921 Pioneer Press map is different from what they played, and it apparently took only months for the membership to ponder a redesign of Five-Day Lakeview.

“Lakeview club golfers are planning to make an 18-hole course of their links,” read the opening of a story in the July 31, 1921, Pioneer Press. “… Tom Vardon, White Bear professional, will be in charge of operations which will get under way at the earliest possible moment.”

Vardon, who was the head professional at White Bear Yacht Club and designer of more than 40 Upper Midwest courses, is cited in almost all credible references as the original designer of Hillcrest Golf Club. It would be needless nitpicking to challenge that, so I won’t. “Mr. Vardon was impressed with the turf covering the tract and declared that it is of a variety that takes years to develop,” the Pioneer Press story continued. “The second nine holes will be constructed on land that has been under cultivation for years and must be plowed and seeded.”

The bulk of the Vardon re-routing of Lakeview lasted for decades, albeit with revisions under the direction of A.W. Tillinghast in 1936-37. The club’s name didn’t last nearly as long.

The Pioneer Press referred to the club as Lakeview for the rest of 1921 and in tournaments in April and May of 1922. On May 14, 1922, the newspaper reported that the clubhouse would be moved closer to Larpenteur Avenue at the club’s northern edge.

More references to Lakeview are found in July and August of 1922 and early April 1923. But on April 22, 1923, a Pioneer Press story mentioned a new watering system that had been installed at “Hillcrest,” and from that point, the club was listed as Hillcrest whenever I found a printed mention. I found no information on reasons behind the name change.

Which brings up a point I and others wondered about: What lake gave Lakeview its name?

The reference most likely was to Beaver Lake, one mile south of the midpoint of the Lakeview/Hillcrest grounds. However, none of the Hillcrest-connected folks I talked with said Hillcrest offered a view of Beaver Lake, though most conceded that there might have been such a view in the course’s less-densely wooded 1920s. On the other hand, a mid-1920s St. Paul fire insurance map designates the Beaver Lake area as “slough” with only a small body of water, and a 1923 aerial photo supports that designation. A 1945 aerial photo shows another body of water just off the southeast corner of the Lakeview/Hillcrest grounds, in what is now Maplewood (it is largely marshland now), but that appeared to be more pond-sized than lake-sized.

Beaver Lake, Maplewood

—————-

St. Paul resident Ross Walkowiak, who is well-versed in Minnesota golf history and far more adept technologically than I am, put together a graphic piece that should be of interest to anyone who was familiar with the routing of Hillcrest Golf Club. It shows an aerial photo of Hillcrest at the time of its closing in 2017, superimposed in red with the routing of Lakeview/Hillcrest’s original nine holes in 1921 plus the original proposed routing of a second nine. For reference, Larpenteur Avenue is the street at the top of the photo.

Courtesy of Ross Walkowiak

Below is a 1923 aerial photo of the Lakeview/Hillcrest and part of the Hayden Heights areas of St. Paul. The golf course is at the far right side of the photo, basically from top to bottom. There is a diagonal street at the top-left of the photo. I believe this was Furness Avenue, now Furness Trail/Furness Parkway, which was the streetcar line referenced in the American Annual Golf Guide entry and which would have provided transportation to and from the golf course. The streetcar line ran as far northeast as White Bear Lake and Mahtomedi, connecting with the famed Wildwood Amusement Park.

Below is a 1945 aerial photo of the Hillcrest Golf Club area. This photo and the previous one are courtesy of the University of Minnesota’s John Borchert Map Library.

Other Lakeview/Hillcrest notes:

— Carl Lindgren was the first professional at Lakeview. Lindgren was most notably known as a longtime pro at Visalia, Calif., and also had positions in Detroit Lakes, Minn., and Mandan, N.D., where he died at age 61 in 1956.

— In late 2017, as Hillcrest was closing down, I invited readers to share their memories of the club. I’m inviting them again, either via this story or via the link in this paragraph.

Natalie Klasinski tees off on the 18th hole at Hillcrest Golf Club in 2017. (Valerie Reichel photo)

Soon-to-be-published post: An intriguing Hillcrest-area report that never came to fruition.

Thanks to those who contributed information and even speculation on early Lakeview/Hillcrest, including Ross Walkowiak, Dan Kelly, Rick Shefchik, Doug Mangine, John Hamburger and Mike Manthey. 

Foley Golf Club, est. 1930: Honesty counts (up)

Lost golf courses,

He was, one would think, one of the last people in the county who would either cheat or not fess up.

So it must be presumed that Father Frank First, then of St. Lawrence Catholic Church in Duelm, Minn., should be saluted for his forthrightness on a September day in 1930 just up the road from his home parish.

Father First, playing one of the first rounds on Foley Golf Club (Minnesota lost course No. 202), might have been briefly challenged by hellish temptation to not adhere to 6-6-d of the Rules of Golf, the bible of the game as it were, as spelled out by the United States Golf Association:

“The competitor is responsible for the correctness of the score recorded for each hole on his score card. If he returns a score for any hole lower than actually taken, he is disqualified.”

Golf is a game of honor. And Father First was being painfully honorable when he turned in his scorecard that day, as reported on by the Foley Independent of Sept. 24, 1930.

Ernest Boberg had low score of the day, posting an even 100, the newspaper reported, “while Father First of Duelm developed bad eyes and had high score, it being 120.”

Myopia isn’t a great excuse, Reverend, but yes, we’ve all experienced unmitigated disaster on the front nine. And the back. (Incidentally, Father First wreaked his gruesome revenge on golf 10 years later by, the St. Cloud Times reported, bowling a perfect game of 300 at the St. Anthony lanes in St. Cloud.)

Foley Golf Club was in the first days of its inaugural season when Father First brought his 20/250 up from Duelm. Going back five months, the Independent had reported on the club’s genesis.

“Foley Golf Fans to Have Course,” read the headline in the Foley Independent of April 23, 1930.

“Work has begun on the Foley Golf Course which is to be located on the Prudent Brunn farm, half a mile south of Foley,” the story began. “… Taking advantage of the natural features offered by the tract available is expected that a sporty and interesting course will be evolved. Some of the fairways will be over sloping hills and among fine shade trees, and a small pond will provide a splendid water hazard.

“… Mr. Brunn is contemplating, in addition to the golf course, the construction of a tennis court, which he plans to operate in connection.”

Brunn (his name was spelled Brun in references that carry more veracity) hired a prominent figure in Minnesota golf to design the course. Oscar Oman was the professional at Moorhead Country Club and, according to the Independent story, also had designed courses at Long Prairie, Paynesville, Browns Valley and Spicer (the latter two are now lost courses). An Internet entry indicates he also designed the current course at Ortonville.

Where was the Foley golf course situated? Only one source out of a half-dozen I talked with spoke with any conviction on the matter, and it confirmed what I had suspected.

An ad in the June 5, 1931, St. Cloud Times and credited to “Prudent Brun, Supt.” placed Foley Golf Course a half-mile south of town “on Duelm Road.” Though the modern-day Duelm Road runs east and west through Duelm, which is 6 1/2 miles south of Foley, it’s apparent that Brun’s reference was to what is now Minnesota Highway 25, which runs south out of Foley and to within a mile of Duelm.

A 1935 Benton County plat map shows an 80-acre plot near the Foley city limits and owned by Prudent Brun, with Stony Brook cutting through the far southeastern corner of the property. This is where Foley Golf Course was. Today, the southernmost holes of Stone Creek Golf Course lie just across Stony Brook from the old Brun property, and the resting place of Foley GC likely was be the area around Maria Drive, just southeast of the First Presbyterian Church.

The designs of Brun and Oman in the spring of 1930 appear to have not come to fruition until late summer. The St. Cloud Times of Sept. 1, 1930, reported that the Foley Commercial Club and Legion post had jointly donated $50 to pay “the professional golfer who last spring laid out the nine-hole course on the Brunn farm near here, for the members of the Foley Golf club.”

“Because of the weather the course has not been whipped into shape and the members of the club are waiting for a substantial rain before this work is to be done.”

The story listed par and yardage for each hole. No. 2 was the longest, at 530 yards. No. 8 was the shortest, at 200. Total yardage was 3,065, and par was 35. Greens fees were 25 cents. J.W. Nieman was the club president.

The course opened on Aug. 31, 1930, according to an account in the Foley Independent, with 18 golfers registered to play. Children were not allowed, and “ladies have been requested to leave their high heels home, due to the fact that these heels will spoil the greens.”

Brun, incidentally, barely won the race to establish the first golf course in Foley. The next week, the Independent reported on a new course in town, par 16, using Model T Ford parts. “Another hole is made of old worn out pistons,” the newspaper reported.

Yes, a miniature course.

On Sept. 28, 1930, Foley Golf Club held its first all-members tournament, with A.C. Kasner edging Boberg by one stroke.

An April 1931 story in the Independent confirmed that the Foley course had sand greens. “The course is very popular and is the coolest place under the sun,” an Aug. 5 story reported.

And within years of its founding, as with scores of golf courses across Minnesota, Foley GC’s star began to fade.

In May 1935, the St. Cloud Times reported that Tom Niedzielski, Benton County register of deeds, would keep Foley Golf Club operating.

“It appeared there would be no Foley golf course this year,” the story read. “Prudent Brun, owner of the farm on which the course is located, had decided that the financial returns did not warrant the bother of the course, and was going to plow the land on which the players were wont to test their skill. Came forward Brother Tom. He guaranteed the owner certain financial returns and will operate the course himself. A number of Foley businessmen, showing appreciation of Tom’s efforts, then decided to underwrite sufficient funds to cover the expense of operation.”

The move was a Band-Aid.  I found no evidence of further club activity in 1935 or ’36 and only one mention from 1937 in local newspapers.

“Golfers in Foley,” the St. Cloud Times reported in April 1937, “are confronted with the perennial decision of what to do with their golf course again this year. They have a nice nine-hole layout just south of town but they have been faced with the same financial problem that has bothered many other clubs in the state. Present reports are that the course is doomed this year unless something is done soon.”

As Father First might have put it, ashes to ashes …

1938 aerial photo of area just south of downtown Foley, to the south of Minnesota Highway 23. I believe Prudent Brun’s farm was in the top-left quarter of the photo, and his Foley Golf Club course likely was to the right (east) of his house. The course likely had been closed for a year or two when this photo was taken. Stony Brook runs through the bottom-center and right-center of the photo; to its right (east) is land on which part of Stone Creek Golf Course now lies. (University of Minnesota John Borchert Map Library photo.)

Note: This is the last of a series of posts on 13 lost golf courses in the St. Cloud area, nine of them established from the years 1928-32. The tightly packed combination of geographical area and years of founding make this one of the most remarkable phenomena I’ve seen in six years of researching Minnesota’s lost golf courses.

 

 

Milaca Golf Club, est. 1932: Replacement and forerunner

Lost golf courses, ,

After the Mille Lacs County Golf Club course in Foreston was abandoned — presumably so, and mysteriously so — as the de facto county seat of the game following the 1931 season, it took mere months for a replacement to emerge.

Less than four miles away, at that.

“Work to be Rushed on Milaca Golf Course,” read a headline in the Mille Lacs County Times of May 12, 1932, suggesting a degree of urgency on the part of the area’s golfers to get nine new fairways up and running and nine new cups down and, well, lying, I guess. The St. Cloud Daily Times followed four days later with a story that probably was a rewrite of the Mille Lacs paper entry, headlined “Milaca Begins Golf With 20 New Members.”

The St. Cloud story said an organization known as the Milaca Golf association would be formed if 20 people were to show up for a meeting that been held. Twenty-four did, and the organization was green-lighted.

Membership fee was set at $10, with greens fees to be determined.

“Land for the course has been procured north of Milaca on the west side of the Trunk Highway No. 18,” the St. Cloud Times reported, “and is well located, being rolling and sloping down gently to the bank of the Rum river. There are a number of large trees on the grounds that will help make it an ideal place for recreation.”

Stop right there.

Not with the construction of the course. I don’t mean that. The Milaca Golf Club course (lost course No. 201) was indeed built and endured for about a decade, to its credit during a tough time for golf in greater Minnesota. More on that to come. What I mean is, stop right there with detailing the course’s location.

Here is where the twisting, turning Rum River again — as with lost courses in Foreston and Princeton— grabbed me by, well, the knickers (metaphorically speaking; I don’t own any baggy pants) and threw me off course.

In searching for Milaca’s lost golf course, I looked for Highway 18. I looked for the Rum River. I found their nearest convergence closer to Foreston than Milaca: Mille Lacs County 18 crosses the West Branch of the Rum just north of Foreston, which is not “north of Milaca,” as reported in the newspaper story, and the river and highway come close to each other in only one other place, about three miles north of Foreston, a point that is decidedly more west of Milaca than north.

Old aerial photos offered no evidence of a golf course in this area. A phone call to Milaca’s current golf course, Stones Throw, turned up third-hand confirmation of a former course in Milaca but no hard evidence and no club members who recalled the place.

Plat maps were a long shot without knowing names of property owners on whose land the courses were placed. And all of the plat maps I could find left a large chronological gap, with maps from 1916 and 1954 but nothing in between.

On something of a lark, I discovered that the University of Minnesota’s John Borchert Map Library had a 1941 plat map of Milaca and the surrounding area.

And I found this:

Note the owner of a 40-acre plot near the top-center of the map: “Milaca Golf Ass’n.” And the plot is close to the Rum River, as mentioned in the St. Cloud Times story — albeit the East Branch of the Rum, not the West.

But where was Trunk Highway 18? Still over to the west, running north out of Foreston?

The answer is “Nope,” as it turns out. In the 1930s, Highway 18 ran north out of Milaca, not Foreston. The road later became Highway 169, as designated on this plat map. Today, it is named Central Avenue. Heading north out of downtown Milaca, Central Avenue runs past Stones Throw, out of the city and to a junction with U.S. 169.

A half-mile west of the junction lies the plot owned in 1941 by the Milaca Golf Association. It is now mostly a cornfield, says the current landowner, Milaca-area businessman Dale “Hoot” Gilbert, who confirmed that his land used to be a golf course. Though the 1941 plat map suggests the Rum touched the northwest corner of the Golf Association plot, Gilbert says his plot does not quite stretch to the river, coming within perhaps 300 yards of it.

And there we have it … positive ID of Milaca’s lost golf course.

The Milaca Golf Association course had not been opened by late May of 1932. A Mille Lacs County Times story noted that the new course would have sand greens — one square, one octagonal and seven round. Four men, under the direction of Walter Bowman, were building the course.

The layout had been designed by a prominent figure in St. Cloud-area golf. Larry Rieder was a golf and football standout at St. Cloud Teachers College before becoming golf coach at the college and professional (and trick-shot artist) at St. Cloud Country Club. He was enlisted by Milaca businessmen to “lay out a new municipal golf course along the banks of the Rum river,” the St. Cloud Times reported on May 24, 1932, “and the proposed project of the new Milaca Golf club is nearing completion.”

Dr. M.K. Rudd struck the first tee shot at the new course at 8 a.m. on June 26, 1932. Weekday greens fees were set at 25 cents. Sixty players tried the course on its opening day, Olen Olson of Milaca heading the field with a 40-43–83.

“A large number of those playing,” the Mille Lacs County Times reported, “did not turn in their score cards to to having trouble on the treacherous six and eight holes of the course. These two holes, although considered no harder than the rest of the seven are giving the players more trouble due to the fact that these two holes call for unusual control of the iron clubs.”

Translation: I don’t care what you say. Those two holes must have been damn difficult.

Play at Milaca Golf Club continued for more than a decade, though apparently not uninterrupted. Al Sundberg of Milaca won a 14-person competition in July 1937 with an 82 in high winds. R.B. Hixson was club president through the late 1930s and as late as 1942.

Best guess here is that Milaca Golf Club ceased operations in 1943. On April 29, 1944, the St. Cloud Times reported that a meeting would be held and “open to anyone interested in playing golf after the war, inasmuch as it is planned to operate the course as soon as the war is over.”

On May 23, 1944, the Milaca Chamber of Commerce endorsed a plan for the golf club to operate after World War II ended. “The businessmen agreed that the golf club was a decided asset to the village and might be instrumental in inducing other businesses and professional men to locate here …” the Mille Lacs County Times reported.

More than $200 had been raised to keep the club operating, but $600 more would be required “so that when the war is won and the boys return, they will know that the home front has done its part to preserve the things they left behind.”

However, I found no mentions of Milaca Golf Club in brief scans of 1947 and 1949 newspapers. It wasn’t until 1955 that the city became host to a golf course again.

This course again was named Milaca Golf Club, again featured sand greens and was designed by Elinor Johnson. Some of the new club’s founders, according to current club manager Wendy Hoeck, had been officers when the first Milaca GC was organized in 1932. Among them were Edwin Odegard, A.R. Cravens, J.A. Allen, E.S. Hagquist and Henry Anderson.

The club added nine holes in 2000, designed by Jeff McDowell. Now named Stones Throw Golf Course, its sixth and seventh holes nestle up against the Rum River, and O’Neill Brook cuts through the property and comes into play on other holes.

Not so shockingly, Larry Rieder’s square and octagonal greens are nowhere to be found.

Below, a few images from Stones Throw. The Rum was up from rainfall on the day I visited. The video is very short, but hey — songbirds.

 

Thank you to the Mille Lacs Historical Society, especially Wendy Davis, for the research help.

 

Rum River mysteries, Chapter I: Princeton Golf Club

Lost golf courses,

The Rum River will not yield its lost-golf course secrets easily.

There are seven golf courses on or very near the banks of the Rum on its serpentine, 158-mile journey from Mille Lacs Lake in Onamia to the Mississippi River in Anoka.

Roll call: Stones Throw in Milaca, Princeton Golf Course and Rum River Hills in Anoka.

Yes, that’s only three. I can count, OK?

Completed roll call, including lost golf courses: Milaca Golf Club, Mille Lacs Golf Club in Foreston, Princeton Golf Club and Bar L Ranch Club near Isanti.

I visited the first three of those lost courses, all dating to the late 1920s or early 1930s, one day in mid-July. I had come across information on the courses in newspaper archives and with the help of local historical societies, but my day trip up Highway 169 unfortunately provided little clarity and, literally, a lot of the opposite in the form of three forced pull-overs to wait out thunderstorms.

First stop: Princeton, covered in this post. I will get to Foreston and Milaca later as I reach the 200 mark in Minnesota’s lost-golf course roll call.

PRINCETON GOLF CLUB — DOUBLED DOWN

Organized golf in Princeton started not on the Rum River but on a site one mile due west of where the river forks into its East (main) and West branches.

“Princeton Golf Club Is Organized,” read a headline in the June 21, 1928, issue of the Princeton Union. The club had 16 members and 10 who were listed as organizers of the club, with C.L. Torgerson elected the first president. “Most of the members of the club have been playing for the past month at the fair grounds where they have been laying out a course of six holes.”

The article concluded, “If interest in the game continues, next year the club plans to secure a tract of about 30 acres and lay out a larger course.”

For the sake of lost-course accounting, I’m calling this fairgrounds site Princeton Golf Club I, lost course No. 198.

Princeton Golf Club continued to operate at the fairgrounds in 1929, increasing its membership fee by $2 to $5 while considering three potential sites for relocation and expansion — one north of town, one west of the fairgrounds and one southwest of town.

The club adopted articles of incorporation on Nov. 1, 1929, shortly after it had settled on an entirely different site for expansion.

“It seems quite probable,” the Princeton Union reported in October 1929, “that negotiations will be commenced to secure the 40-acre tract owned by Joe Leathers lying east of the Scenic highway and north of the bridge over the East branch of the Rum river. The cost of purchasing this tract and improving it would be approximately $4,000.”

The next spring, the St. Cloud Times reported that the Leathers tract “will be supplemented by 20 acres leased from Charles Umberhofer on the east bank of the river, and will offer golfers here a pleasant diversion during the summer months.” Earlier, the Princeton Union reported that the course would consist of nine holes at 3,032 yards with a par of 34.

This was the genesis of what I’m dubbing Princeton Golf Club II (lost course No. 199). And, 88 years later, this was the start of the Rum twisting me this way and that, daring me — and others — to figure out exactly where PGCII was.

Here is the tale of the serpentine search:

The relocated Princeton Golf Club course, it was reported at its founding, would be mostly on or near the west bank of the Rum. Leathers’ house, which still stands, was just north of the fork in the river, near the west bank, not far from the corner of 5th Avenue North and North 5th Street. And the home of Charles “Umberhofer” — it took some digging just to determine his name actually was Umbehocker, and he had owned a prominent ice-making business on the Rum — was just south of the river’s fork, on the west bank, a site now occupied by the Princeton Community Library and apartment buildings.

My hypothesis at that point was that the golf course had lain just north of the intersection of Minnesota 95 and Rum River Road, near the homes of both Leathers and Umbehocker.

Double bogey.

Umbehocker, I was told by a Princeton native in his 90s, owned multiple plots in and around Princeton. So the golf course wasn’t necessarily near his former home. And the Leathers family, I discovered after hitting repeated dead ends in searching for informative plat maps, owned not one but two adjacent 40-acre plots, stretching from Joseph Leathers’ home north to about 12th Street. Both of those lots included land alongside the Rum, near the area of what is now Pioneer Park.

One or two people I conversed with thought the Princeton Golf Club course started near the current Princeton Middle School. Another, Wendy Davis of Princeton, who contributed immensely to the research on Princeton GC via the Mille Lacs County Historical Society, said her mother believed the golf course was in the area of Pioneer Park.

One newspaper story offered a retro-virtual layout. “The first fairway extends a distance of 485 yards and has been cleared of stumps and the land levelled with a tractor and roller,” the St. Cloud Times reported in April 1930. “The first tee will be on the hill near the city limits. In the stretch of land which as been cleared for this fairway about 100 trees were cut down and the stumps blasted out. The first green is 30 yards west of the river. Near this first green will be the second tee. The third tee will be at the south point of this high ground between a morass and the river. The fairway here, the shortest on the course will extend 170 yards northeast. There are five holes on the west side of the river and four on the east side. Foot bridges will be built to accommodate the players. The Princeton club now has a membership of 29 and 20 others are expected to join before the season is formally opened.”

All such detail provided no certainty. Plat maps and Google searches revealed nothing definitive about Princeton Golf Club’s location. I studied an aerial photo from 1939 until my right eye was my left and my left was my right but still could not positively identify the golf course.

Presumed area of Princeton Golf Course, 1939 aerial photo, University of Minnesota’s John Borchert Map Library. The course likely had shut down about four years earlier, so most of its features aren’t readily apparent (high water on the Rum might have significantly changed the look of the area). The street on the far left is 5th Avenue North, with Pioneer Cemetery at the top-left corner.

Semi-armed with information, I connected with Mike Trunk, who operates a surveying business in Princeton. Trunk once lived near the Princeton maintenance grounds on North 11th Street and had tromped on down to the Rum often as a youth to fish or just explore. He recalled from about 25 years earlier part of a structure near a sharp bend in the river that he thought might have been a footbridge. Was it for the golf course? We didn’t know but suspected it was. So, parking at Princeton Middle School, Trunk and I tromped down to the river again, him smartly wearing above-the-ankle rubber boots and me stupidly wearing shorts and tennis shoes. (I got wet feet but avoided the poison ivy, thanks only to Trunk’s direction.)

There, we found …

… nothing, really, but the Rum, plus high grass and dozens of wooden footings that Trunk speculated had been pounded into the riverbank in recent years to support the ground just below the middle school. He also speculated that remnants of the suspected footbridge might have been removed at the same time.

There was no tangible evidence of a golf course having occupied the land, though we knew it almost certainly did.

The Rum River, just south of Princeton Middle School and possibly part of the former grounds of Princeton Golf Club.

I briefly walked through part of Pioneer Park, again concluding nothing except that the area likely had changed dramatically since the 1930s, the open areas largely filling in with woods and backwater.

The Rum River at Pioneer Park, possibly on or near the former site of Princeton Golf Club.

POST-SEARCH

The Rum still has me hornswoggled. It did not invite me to search further that day, instead summoning partner-in-crime Mother Nature to chase me out of the area with a nasty thunderstorm (shown below, near the Leathers house).

Anybody see the lost golf course? (It’s off to the right somewhere.)

I now concede to the Rum and am willing to offer only a best guess on the exact whereabouts of Princeton Golf Club II:

I believe the first tee was near the northeast corner of the maintenance grounds, and the first hole was a dogleg right that skirted what is now the middle school grounds and finished near the river.  I would say the second and third holes also were on the west side of the river. After a river crossing, holes 4, 5, 6 and 7 were on the east side. The eighth was back on the west side, and the ninth ran parallel to the eighth, returning and ending near the first tee. A river crossing on one or two of the holes would have made sense from a golf-design standpoint, but I can’t speculate on candidates for that.

Trunk, I gather, believes the course might have been slightly north of where I judge it to have been. I don’t think either of our theories is more or less valid than the other.

There are other elements of certainty about Princeton Golf Club’s Rum River site. Well, relative certainty.

As the new grounds opened in 1930, E.L. McMillan was club president. The next year brought a new president, Raleigh Herdliska. In April 1932, the Princeton Union reported that a family membership would cost $15, with no one under the age of 12 allowed on the course. Greens fees would be 35 cents, 50 cents for Sundays and holidays. The club manager, W.C. Roos, was enlisted to “remove the danger of lost balls in the right rough at the right of the first fairway.” In May 1932, plans were announced for a tournament to be held.

By 1934, Princeton High School was fielding a golf team, presumably with a hat tip to Princeton GC for having established the game in town. Also in 1934, a shortstop tournament attracted 23 entries. (Update, 2019: Another 1934 story, passed along in late 2018 by Wendy Davis, reported that the golf course had been leased to the village of Princeton for five years.)

Details in a 1935 Princeton Union story contradicted earlier reports, asserting that a course of 1,700 yards was laid out in 1929 and that “700 more yards were added last summer.”

“The links are in a beautiful location,” the story continued, “and the course will undoubtedly in future years become popular. Just as present the links are not in particularly good condition but William Roos who is the manager states he expects to have them ready for the players by July 4.”

Contrary to the story’s speculation, Princeton Golf Club’s grounds likely were soon abandoned. A 1938 Union story reported on a meeting at which it was “decided that an effort should be made to revive the Princeton Golf club. Eight members were in attendance.” F.J. Maroney operated the club and held the lease at that time. (I could not find on plat maps any nearby land owned by Maroney around that time.)

I found no further references to the golf club in 1938 or 1939, leading me to conclude the course remained closed even after the “revival” meeting. Years later, in August 1954, the St. Cloud Times reported on the formal opening of a new course, Rum River Golf Club, on the southeastern side of town and again alongside the river. That layout remains in operation today as Princeton Golf Course.

Postscript: After this post was published, I was apprised of 1937 Union stories reporting that Maroney, “athletic coach of the Princeton school,” had leased the golf course grounds and planned on repairing them and reopening the course after two years of it lying idle. A tournament was played there in June.

ONE LAST PUZZLE

There are conflicting and puzzling reports on the designer of Princeton Golf Club at the Rum River site.

The October 1929 Union story on the club reported that a group including “J.A. Hunter, a professional golf player of Minneapolis, inspected the grounds. Mr. McMillan stated Mr. Hunter thought the tract would make an ideal course.

“Mr. Hunter has considerable experience in laying out golf courses. He is at present working on a course at Nicollet and Lyndale in Minneapolis, and has planned and rearranged several other courses in that city. He agreed to come to Princeton at different times for a nominal consideration to direct the work of laying out the golf course.”

In March 1930, however, the Union reported that Charles J. Mulder would lay out the new course and that Mulder “has laid out some of the finest golf courses in the Twin Cities.”

I have not heard of a Charles Mulder in relation to Minnesota golf. Research turned up a Charles Mulder who lived in nearby Zimmerman, with a suggestion that he had experience in earth-moving. Perhaps Hunter — James A. Hunter, who in 1923 designed the nine-hole Country Club, a layout that would become known as Edina Country Club — handled the Princeton GC routing and other details, while Mulder presided over construction.

As for the reference to Hunter working on a course at “Nicollet and Lyndale,” that is as baffling as anything in this story. Those streets run parallel through Minneapolis, just blocks apart, and there is no current or lost course in that area of the city.

Next: Mille Lacs Golf Club at Foreston, Minnesota lost golf course No. 200.