Minnesota golf history: On the evening of Aug. 29,1901, seven clubs became charter members of the Minnesota Golf Association when the organization convened in Winona for the first time.
Should have been eight.
Roadside got snubbed.
You might not know about Roadside Golf Club. But to channel Rumack to Elaine Dickinson in “Airplane!” — “Roadside, what is it?!” — that’s not important right now.
What is important — well, in a trivial sense, which of course makes no sense at all — is that, at 8 p.m. on that 1901 evening, seven clubs came together to form the MGA: Bryn Mawr of Minneapolis, Meadow-Brook of Winona, Town & Country Club and Merriam Park of St. Paul, Minikahda of Minneapolis, Tatepaha of Faribault (also spelled in some historical entries as Tapeta) and Rochester/Silver Creek (more on that course in a post coming soon).
One more club should have been invited to the party but never was. The St. Paul Globe of Aug. 30, 1901, explained:
“The Roadside club, of St. Paul, was not invited through misunderstanding,” the newspaper reported, “and the secretary was directed to notify that club of the action taken tonight.”
There is no indication from MGA records that Roadside ever joined the organization, and by 1903, the golf course was gone.
I suppose, almost 116 years later, this piece of clerical oversight is entirely inconsequential. But when I came across the Globe entry recently, I just found it curious, so I thought I would waste five minutes of your life that you’ll never get back with the revelation.
As you were.
P.S. 1: In case you’re truly interested in Roadside, Ms. Dickinson, a little bit about the place:
Roadside Golf Club, situated off Summit Avenue in what is now St. Paul’s Merriam Park East neighborhood, was formed in May 1897 by members of St. Paul’s Town & Country Club, Minnesota’s first golf course. As the T&CC members decided to branch out and put another club on the map, they established Roadside 2.5 miles to the east. Its clubhouse address was listed as being on the 1100 block of Summit Avenue. The image below, an inset from an 1898 plat map of Hennepin and Ramsey County and held by the John Borchert Map Library at the University of Minnesota, shows the approximate location of Roadside Golf Club within the red boundary.
Though exact starting dates of Minnesota’s earliest golf courses (as opposed to golf clubs) can be debated, Roadside appears to have been among the first five courses established in the state. It was a 12-hole layout that prominently featured play from Town & CC’s female membership, and it lasted until 1903, when residential St. Paul expansion squeezed it out of existence.
P.S. 2: Below is a copy of the first page of the minutes of the first meeting of the Minnesota Golf Association, as held by the MGA. The minutes likely were not transcribed directly at the meeting but were re-recorded before 1910. Thanks to the MGA and Warren Ryan for permission to use.
