In October, the North St. Paul Historical Society hosted a presentation on Northwood Country Club in North St. Paul.
Actually, the presentation was on both Northwood Country Clubs: first, the Northwood familiar to longtime area residents as the restaurant and supper club owned and managed by John Heimel, and second, the Northwood familiar to some Minnesota golf history buffs who recognize it as the first Jewish golf club in Minnesota, established in 1915 and abandoned as a golf course in the mid-1940s, probably 1946, with a portion of the membership moving a mile to the southeast and buying Hillcrest Golf Club (also now a lost course, as of fall 2017).
I was not able to attend the presentation but was forwarded a few photos displayed there. They are posted below, courtesy of and thanks to Dan Goodenough, Tony Ducklow and the North St. Paul Historical Society. Click on any of the photos for larger views.
Northwood green, circa 1910s, with Clarence Johnston-designed clubhouse and caddie building in background.
Northwood Country Club (the supper club) burned to the ground on June 1, 1976, never to reopen. From “ForeGoneGolf.com”: “… its address is now occupied by by two homes on a knoll on Northwood Drive. The last-known standing relic from the golf course was its caddie house, which stood in what is now Northwood Park. The caddie house was moved to Colby Hills Park, at the southwest edge of North St. Paul, before being razed in 2009.”
Golf course maintenance isn’t rocket science. But it’s close.
Consider a recent story in the magazine Golf Course Management, titled:
“Antimicrobial options for reducing bacterial etiolation on putting greens.”
OK. Sure. Huh?
Then consider golf course maintenance in, let’s say, 1935, when it went like this:
“I remember the dandelions. They took two cars and put barbed wire between them and they’d get the dandelions off, usually on Sundays or before tournaments.”
OK. Sure. Whatever works.
The dandelion — or should it be damned-delion? — quote is offered by Muriel Widmark Dorn of Ivanhoe, a small town in southwestern Minnesota that once was but no longer is home to a nine-hole golf course. The course, named Midway Golf Links, is No. 157 on the ever-growing list of Minnesota’s lost golf courses.
Muriel Widmark Dorn has to be one of the few people alive who remembers Midway, which disappeared from the Lincoln County landscape in the early 1940s. She doesn’t have extensive memories of the golf course, but at age 96 — soon to be 97, she points out — those she does have are salient, maybe in part because Midway Golf Links was family.
Midway, technically not situated within the Ivanhoe city limits but on farmland 4.5 miles west of downtown, was founded in 1933 by Widmark Dorn’s uncle Cliff.
“It was kind of hard — one hill to the next,” Dorn says of the course. On one hole, she recalls, “You had a pond to hit over, so we used to find a lot of golf balls in there.”
Dorn’s other memories of Midway Golf Links include: The course had sand greens. There was a canteen on top of a hill where refreshments — pop and candy — were sold. She passed the course on her 2.5-mile walk home from the district school and often stopped to play nine holes. Golfers played Midway with wooden-shafted clubs. And Cliff Widmark, she recalls, was not an avid golfer when he founded the course but began playing more at that point.
Muriel Widmark Dorn’s first-hand memories of Midway Golf Links are augmented by written history.
“NEW GOLF LINKS WILL BE OPENED SUNDAY, MAY 7th,” read a headline in the May 5, 1933, Ivanhoe Times. The story noted Clifford Widmark’s status as founder of Midway Golf Links and that “local golf bugs are looking forward with interest to this occasion.”
Why the Midway name?
“The links are located at an advantageous point both to Ivanhoe and Hendricks, being five miles west of the former and seven miles southeast of the latter,” the Times reported.
This made good business sense for Widmark. Though golf courses dotted the southwestern Minnesota prairie in the 1920s and ’30s, it’s debatable as to whether Ivanhoe, population 556 in 1930 (and 559 in 2010), or Hendricks, population 702 in 1930 (and 713 in 2010), could have supported a golf course on its own.
Site of Midway Golf Links, more or less midway between Ivanhoe and Hendricks, is represented by red rectangle. Ivanhoe, seat of Lincoln County, is near the right edge of the aerial photo, Hendricks, near the South Dakota border, is near the left edge. John Borchert University of Minnesota Map Library photo.
Also making good business sense for Cliff Widmark: his choice of consulting service.
“Before making preparations to begin work on the ground,” the Times reported, “Mr. Widmark engaged the services of Mr. Brokel, a golf pro of the cities, who visited the premises and gave assurance that they could be developed into a fine course. This gentleman platted the course and laid out the suitable location of nine holes, together with giving information as to how the greens should be built.”
“Brokel” was Frank Brokl of Minneapolis, a state champion golfer in the late 1920s and a notable name in the development of small-town golf in Minnesota, South Dakota and Iowa. Among Brokl’s other designs was the now-lost course in Lake Benton.
The Ivanhoe Times’ report on Midway’s founding also noted that the greens were 40 feet in diameter (“larger than the average,” the newspaper said); that the course was 2,570 yards long and played to a par of 34, with no par-5s and a shortest hole of 157 and a longest of 365; and that power mowers would be employed to trim the fairways. (That having been written, I have no doubt that Muriel Widmark’s barbed-wire-trimmer recollection also is accurate.)
Midway Golf Links grounds, west of Ivanhoe, Minn., 1938 aerial map from University of Minnesota’s John Borchert Map Library. The golf course grounds are in the bottom-center portion of the photo. The east-west road is Minnesota Highway 19.
The Times also reported that tournaments would be played at Midway. In 1936, the newspaper reported on an 18-hole team match between Ivanhoe and Marshall golfers. Ivanhoe won the match 655-700, with D.H. Wilson of Marshall recording a low score of 72. For Ivanhoe, M.J. Grodzick and Floyd Muchlinski both shot 76.
Another Ivanhoe Times story reported on a meeting between Widmark and club members over an apparent predicament concerning course condition and flagging patronage. It was reported that 30 members would be needed in order for Midway to continue operating.
On April 18, 1937, the Minneapolis Tribune ran a one-paragraph story headlined “Golf Club Changes Hands.” Datelined Ivanhoe, Minn., the story read, “The Ivanhoe Golf club has decided to take over the Midway golf course, owned by Clifford Widmark, during the coming season. Leo Kruse has been placed in charge of the links.”
Midway Golf Links lasted only a few more years, and issues persisted.
A July 26, 1940, a front-page story in the Ivanhoe Times reported on an impending tournament at Midway. “Reports are that the Ivanhoe course is minus dandelions, overgrown rough, filled sloughs and long-haired fairways. The greens, authentic sources stated, have been relieved of boulders dangerous to good putting.
“Preparations have been made for a large attendance … for gosh don’t disappoint ’em!”
In 2012, the Ivanhoe Times reprinted a story from its April 25, 1941, issue titled “Midway Golf Links will open for 1941 season.”
“It’ll be another season of picking stray golf balls out of neighboring grain and alfalfa fields for local golfers,” the Times had reported. “Another year’s rental has been agreed upon and the Midway Links will again be there this season for those late evening and Sunday sessions.”
The Times indicated that membership was only about 20. “All that remains now is a couple sanding bees to put the greens in shape and a prayer to keep the mowers together. … Next call will be for volunteer workers to sand the greens, pull a few weeds and put kinks in the back muscles. Then its (sic) time for that annual battle for par.”
My best guess is that 1941 was Midway Golf Links’ final season. I could find no further reporting on the course in subsequent years’ issues of the Ivanhoe Times, and with the onset of U.S. involvement in World War II in December 1941, it seems highly likely that area residents turned their attention and service to war efforts and that the course was abandoned.
Muriel Widmark Dorn, however, continued with the game. Though she is no longer an active golfer, she did play for years at Hendricks Golf Club, established in 1969, and proudly reports that a few years ago, she played there in a foursome in which all four women were in their 90s.
Browns Valley, Minnesota, is Muhammad Ali to my George Foreman. Not long after I first heard about the existence of a lost golf course in the far-western Minnesota town, Browns Valley began bobbing and weaving, feinting and jabbing, doing the rope-a-dope.
Browns Valley was the rope. I was … well, guess what I was.
The history of golf in the small town on Minnesota’s Traverse Gap, occupying the westernmost point of a notch at the South Dakota border, with Lake Traverse to the north and Big Stone Lake to the south, threw me for a couple of loops when I started looking into it.
Browns Valley’s Inter-Lake Tribune of April 23, 1925, pointed toward the establishment of a future lost golf course when it reported, “A big bunch of golf enthusiasts from Browns Valley, met a like bunch from Beardsley on Sunday last, down on the banks of the Big Stone, at what is known as Anderson’s Point, where golf grounds had already been selected and partly laid out.
” … much interest and enthusiasm was displayed. The preliminary steps were taken for the organization of a golf club of 50 members. … They may have to buy a sprinkler, for they do say Harry Smith and one or two others raise an awful dust, whole clouds of dust, when they pound away at the pellet — and miss it.”
Harry, I know what it’s like to whiff.
My mind had been overly focused on identifying a lost course in Browns Valley — and only Browns Valley. I didn’t consider another possibility until re-reading an April 1928 Minneapolis Tribune story that reported 29 cities would be represented at a Central Minny tournament on July 9-10 in Sauk Centre, among them “Browns Valley-Beardsley.”
Wait a minute. There’s a reference to Beardsley again.
As it turns out, Browns Valley and Beardsley are close, at least geographically, and most likely shared a golf course and golf club.
The cities of Browns Valley (1930 population 981, 2010 population 589) and Beardsley (406, 233) are separated by only 6.5 miles on a direct path, so it became clear that the two cities’ golfers had combined to form a club for competition’s sake. And, apparently, to share the same golfing grounds, close to Big Stone Lake.
Then it hit me — like an Ali right hook — that I already had identified this lost course in “Fore! Gone.” The book reported that Lakeside Golf Club was established in 1924, five miles from Beardsley and near the state border — which coincides with the location of the course described in the 1925 Inter-Lake Tribune story. (A Browns Valley librarian last week told me it was her understanding that the course lay on the Hornstein property, and a plat map from that era shows a Hornstein property near Big Stone Lake, with three Anderson properties — Anderson’s Point, remember? — nearby. A creek, perhaps Fish Creek, appears to have run through the Hornstein property. Neither the course nor its remains, however, are visible in aerial photos from 1938, the earliest that can be readily accessed.)
The Browns Valley-Beardsley course, I had reported in my book, citing the 1930-31 American Annual Golf Guide, was nine holes, 2,227 yards, par 33, with sand greens.
I was dazed but ultimately satisfied that I had resolved the matter of Browns Valley’s lost golf course.
Then came Round 2, ding-ding-ding. I decided to try to determine when the Browns Valley-Beardsley course was abandoned. And I stumbled across more news I hadn’t anticipated.
“New Golf Links,” read the headline in the Inter-Lake Tribune of April 25, 1930. “Browns Valley is to have a new Golf Course,” read the first sentence.
Another Browns Valley lost course?
Well, yes and no. A lost course, yes. Only not in Minnesota.
” … the new links are to be located on the west side of Lake Traverse on the historic Indian Mounds,” the Inter-Lake Tribune story continued.
Which places that golf course in South Dakota — a few miles north of Browns Valley. And which makes sense when considering the story went on to report that the golf club included members from Browns Valley, Sisseton, Effington, Rosholt and Peever. The latter five cities are all in South Dakota.
“The club has been named Tonka-Mani,” the Inter-Lake Tribune reported, “which in the Sioux language means Long Walk, and in addition to the appropriateness of the title, the club is also called by the name of the Indian from whom the lease was obtained.”
The Tonka-Mai club was reported to have taken out a 10-year lease on 80 acres of land. Oscar Oman, the pro at Alexandria Golf Club, was hired to lay out the course. I have no information on how long Tonka-Mai might have lasted, only a likely confirmation that it did exist based on a 1938 aerial map of the area that clearly shows a golf course routing.
Presumed site of the Tonka-Mani Golf Course of South Dakota, which was organized to accommodate golfers from Browns Valley, Minn., and nearby South Dakota communities. The golf course appears to be in the center-left of this photo, with green sites indicated by small, light circles. Big Stone Lake is to the right (east). This site is approximately 6.5 miles north of Browns Valley and 11 miles east of Sisseton, S.D. (University of Minnesota John Borchert Map Library photo)
Even further, it appears Browns Valley took one more swing (and miss, for better or worse) at golf. Randy LaFoy, who researches Minnesota golf courses that were supported by Works Progress Administration projects, passed along a 1938 document that proposed “a complete recreational area and park development” for Browns Valley that would include “golf course, tennis courts, and other sports facilities.” The document said the park would be built on “Village of Browns Valley owned property.”
The proposal was rejected. And that was the end of golf in Browns Valley.
I think. Unless Ali wants to drag me back into the ring.
The lost golf courses of southwestern Minnesota — and there might be 50 of them, for all I know, the way they keep sprouting up on me like cornstalks in the June sunshine — by and large conform neatly to a template.
I have detailed the template ad nauseam in my book and on this web site, but, hey, let’s take that dead horse and boot it one more time.
Scores of golf courses sprang up across the small and medium-sized Minnesota towns in the 1920s, thanks to a robust economy and access to transportation affording folks enough spare time and spare change to take up the game. (Usually they were townfolk, bankers and doctors and businessmen, while farmers, busy with milking and haying, golfed far less frequently but sometimes offered up their pastures via lease to the newly organized golf clubs.) Then, between effects of the Great Depression and World War II, dozens of courses were abandoned in the 1930s and ’40s.
Among them were many in the “Silos and Flagsticks” lost-course heartland of southwestern Minnesota. I have written about 14 of them and have a handful of new-found ones on my to-do list.
One such lost course is in Slayton, the seat of Murray County, 90 miles west of Mankato and 50 miles from the southwestern corner of Minnesota. Slayton followed the template right up to the end — when it stubbornly attempted to bust out of the lost-course mold.
“New Golf Club Is Formed at Slayton,” read a headline in the Minneapolis Tribune of Feb. 28, 1926.
The story read, in part: “Fifty golf players of Slayton met this week and formed the Tri City Golf club, which will begin functioning with the first break of spring. …
“A nine-hole course will be built on a 130-acre tract on the southern outskirts of the city. The location is ideal, being about half way between this city (Slayton) and Iona, and lying along the state highway between the two cities.
“The land upon which the course is located is rolling and a small stream of water flows through it in normal seasons. Golf enthusiasts of Hadley, Avoca, and other nearby towns will be invited to become members of the club.”
The course wasn’t really on the southern outskirts of Slayton, unless one considers the skirt was one really, really large hoop skirt. The old Slayton golf course was 2.7 miles almost directly south of downtown Slayton, at the southwestern corner of the intersection of what is now county highways 32 and 49.
1938 aerial photo of Tri City / Murray / Slayton Golf Club, courtesy of University of Minnesota’s John Borchert Map Library. The course was two miles south of Slayton, just off the intersection of county highways 32 and 49. Routing of some of the holes is plainly visible, as are the greens, which are presumed to have been sand greens, based on their dark, round appearances on the aerial photo. I am puzzled about something, however — though a 1926 Murray County Herald story announcing the course’s establishment said it would be a nine-hole course, I count only five, maybe six, definite green sites, and this plot of land really doesn’t appear large enough to have fielded nine holes. Another mystery …
A reorganization and renaming of the club appears to have occurred in April 1929, when the Tribune reported, “Organization of the Murray Golf club was completed at a recent meeting with the election of officers and completion of arrangements for leasing the course for another year.”
So far, so template-good.
Through the 1930s, proceedings at the golf club appeared to be mostly routine, according to a semi-organized perusal of newspaper clips. (In other words, I didn’t search every word of every year. Which means I probably missed an alien abduction on the fifth fairway in 1933 and a kraken snatching the town pharmacist down by the water at southwest corner of the course in 1937, neither ever to be seen again.) But among happenings at Slayton’s first golf course:
— In 1930, the Murray County Herald reported, some club members were making plans to participate in a tournament in not-far-away Worthington.
— During the first week of June 1935, a headline in the Murray County Herald reported that the course was about to be put in play for the season, with J.R. Price the chairman of the grounds and greens committee. “The dandelions have been somewhat of a nuisance for the ardent golfer for the past few weeks,” the newspaper reported, “but with the present cutting of the fairways, there will be no more trouble looking for balls.”
— A new clubhouse was built in 1938. and the club, the Minneapolis Tribune reported, was “anticipating its largest membership in recent years.”
— In May 1938, N.H. Miller made a hole in one on the eighth hole, and in August 1939, Judge G.J. Kolander aced the 104-yard fourth hole with a 5-iron.
Then came the 1940s, by which time many other 1920s-born golf courses in Minnesota and especially southwestern Minnesota had either closed up shop or were about to. Slayton, however, defied the template and pressed on.
A look through the Murray County Herald of 1940 revealed no local golf coverage, at least that I noticed. But on May 1, 1941, the newspaper reported, Harold Hanson had been elected president of Slayton Golf and Country Club. Membership would cost $10, $5 for women and students. “The question of hiring a care-taker was left to the executive board,” the newspaper reported. A membership of 75 was anticipated for the 1941 season.
By 1942, the United States had entered World War II, the bulk of the coverage in the Murray County Herald had turned toward the war, and, most likely, golf had ceased on the south-of-Slayton grounds. A 1943 story mentioned that Ralph Larson of Slayton had won a tournament at Worthington, but there was no mention of the Slayton course in the story or in any other newspapers I scanned. The newspaper reprinted an editorial from the Austin (Minn.) Daily Herald in which golf was excoriated, the editorialist stridently frowning upon people would play such a game when they could be contributing more by working in the fields.
So, the lost-course template apparently had been fulfilled. The Murray / Slayton layout had been abandoned.
Or not.
I assumed at this point that the golf course had disappeared forever (template paradigm at play). I read nothing about local golf in skimming 1945 newspapers. But I decided to look further. Part of this had to do with a suspicion that, as one of the larger small towns in the area, if that makes any sense, perhaps Slayton still would have had the wherewithal to support a golf course. The city’s population had been growing steadily: 1,045 in 1920, 1,102 in 1930, 1,587 in 1940.
And there, in the pages of the 1946 Murray County Herald, Slayton’s golf course re-emerged.
“Golf Course Open; Greatly Improved” read a headline in the June 6, 1946, Herald.
“After being closed down during the war, the Slayton golf course is again open and in use,” the story read. “Though membership is low, there being only 25 signed up, the number is growing daily, according to President Walter Schrupp, and will reach 80 or 90 once the course is restored to its former good shape.” Also noted were a freshly painted and renovated clubhouse, improved fairways, and an effort to resolve an issue with grub worms.
The golf course presumably made it through 1946, because a story in the Herald of June 19, 1947, was headlined “Golf Club Progresses.”
The newspaper reported that bad weather had delayed the course’s opening for the season but that it was imminent. “The course has been covered with weeds and grass on the greens but the Herald has been informed that a great deal of work already has been done and it will be mowed again at the end of this week.
“Biggest problem facing the mainsprings of the club so far has been lack of funds and manpower. Most of the work that has been done so far has been done by local golf enthusiasts in their spare time.”
So the golf course had been revived, but still, reading between the lines, it appeared to be on life support. And a stroll through 1948 editions of the Murray County Herald revealed no mention of a local golf course.
My best guess is that the Slayton golf course — the one on the lot south of the city — did not survive past 1947. I don’t know that for a fact. Determining dates of lost courses’ demise might be more challenging than uncovering the courses in the first place, because, not surprisingly, the clubs rarely publicized it when their courses shut down, and it is increasingly difficult to find current town residents who remember 1930s and ’40s-era lost courses.
Regardless, the original Slayton golf club made a valiant effort at surviving past the template time frame of early-era Minnesota lost golf courses — that is, established in the 1920s but gone before the end of World War II. And that was not the end of golf in Slayton. In 1957, Slayton Country Club was established one mile north of the city, with a new nine-hole layout. The course is still in operation, with private membership and operated by GreatLife Golf & Fitness.
Notes: Photo at the top of this post is by Peter Wong. As always, I come away with more questions than answers about this lost golf course and welcome any responses or revelations. Thanks for reading.
Notes, Part 2: On Oct. 27, Heather Engelkes contacted me to say she and her husband, John, own the homestead across the land that was the Slayton golf course and that “we now run cattle on the pasture that was once the golf course.” After I chastised her for the likelihood of bovine hoof marks now pockmarking the greens and tee boxes (I was kidding), she further noted that 80 acres of the former golf course is now tilled farmland. Her husband, she said, suspected that there were indeed nine holes on the golf course site.
But one of the compelling things — to me, just me — about rummaging around for Minnesota’s lost golf courses is occasionally coming across something quite unusual — an old scorecard, an old photo, an old duffer buried and petrified beneath the surface of an ancient pot bunker from which he could not extricate himself (OK, haven’t come across one of those yet).
There is satisfaction, too, in sharing a find with two or three people who might care.
Sometimes as many as four.
The downside is that for every find, there can be more questions raised than answers revealed.
Case in point:
In August 2015, I wrote about the former Clearwater Country Club of Annandale, in central Minnesota’s Wright County. A couple of months ago, a friend who shares an interest in Minnesota golf history alerted me to an eBay auction for an old Clearwater CC postcard.
Old postcards of old golf courses in Minnesota aren’t unusual. There are plenty available from the state’s first course, Town & Country Club of St. Paul. There may be even more available from another early and historic course, Minikahda of Minneapolis. (Maddeningly, close to half of the postcards from the latter course mangle the spelling of the course’s name, going with Minikhada or the even more common ultramangling, Minnekahda.)
But postcards from other lost courses don’t show up every day, and they often offer little more than a dim view of a shoreline or a clubhouse. I was drawn to this Clearwater CC postcard because of the clear view of the terrain and Clearwater Lake in the background, and the clear depiction of a golf course, even if no greens or 22-handicappers are visible nearby.
So I bid on the postcard and was fortunate enough to win it, for something less than the price of a new Callaway driver, which I wouldn’t be able to hit worth a damn anyway. A look at the card, and a long-ago view of Clearwater Country Club, is presented below.
Best guess is that the photo was taken from near the center of the golf course, looking northeast and toward Clearwater Lake. Wright County Highway 24, which was more or less the southern border of the course, would be behind the photographer, as would the clubhouse. There is a better look at the entirety of the golf course in an aerial photo of the course on my original post on Clearwater CC (see link above).
But it seems like I can never come up with one nugget from a lost golf course without more unsolved mysteries arising. So it is with Clearwater CC.
I reported in my original post that Clearwater Country Club “opened before 1942, most likely.” I’m never crazy about being so vague, but is inevitable in this line of work/folly because absolute confirmation of “facts” can be difficult to come by. The postcard above, however, suggested that Clearwater CC was in fact founded well before 1942. The date on the postmark, though partially obscured, appeared to be 1932. Short of trying to contact Mr. Martin Syphrit (spelling?), to whom the postcard was mailed and who presumably has long since ceased to become reachable via a valid postal address in Brookville, Pa., I thought I would try to be more precise with the founding date of Clearwater Country Club.
Browsing through issues of the Annandale Advocate from 1932 held on microfilm at the Minnesota History Center revealed nothing — no mention of a golf course. Across the hall from the History Center’s microfilm room, however, is the Gale Library, with a wonderful collection of books, magazines and other resources. Included among those holdings is an Annandale centennial book, issued in 1988 and titled “Community with Spirit.”
The centennial book cleared up for me the exact date of Clearwater Country Club’s founding. An entry reads:
“1925: Agitation for a golf course. In 1925, Mrs. L. Longfellow was the President of the first golf club in Annandale. The first golf course in the area was located near Clearwater Lake. It was a nine-hole course with sand greens, and has since been platted for lots, and many homes have been built on the land.”
As far as I can tell, a 1925 opening would have made Clearwater Country Club the first golf course in Wright County.
Of course, if I had come across the centennial book in the first place, I never would have had to speculate that Clearwater CC was founded “before 1942.” But you never know in which order you’ll find these little gems, so you do what you can with what you have.
Anyway … it may be small potatoes, but there you have it. A cool, old view of Clearwater Country Club, plus the knowledge that someone first striped a drive there in the year 1925.
Best guess is that the photo was taken from near the center of the golf course, looking northeast and toward Clearwater Lake. Wright County Highway 24, which was more or less the southern border of the course, would be behind the photographer, as would the clubhouse. There is a better look at the entirety of the golf course in an aerial photo of the course on my original post on Clearwater CC (see link above).