Tag Archives: Minnesota golf

Westwood Hills: Time travel, with photos

Lost golf courses, ,

Westwood Hills graces us again.

Westwood Hills Golf Course, near the northwest corner of St. Louis Park, had a run of nearly 30 years as one of Minnesota’s best (that’s subjective, but I’m going with it) and most popular (also subjective, also going with it) public golf courses. Its rolling, wooded and, OK, sometimes-spongy former grounds now are occupied principally by a nature center, a schoolyard and many homes and streets.

Many years ago, however, hundreds of west-metro public golfers called Westwood Hills home. As did the McNulty family.

James A. McNulty founded Westwood Hills in 1929, hiring prominent golf architect and professional Tom Vardon to design the course. McNulty named it after a neighborhood in western Los Angeles and established it as an immediate neighbor of Minneapolis Golf Club, which lay just to the south and west. McNulty and family members owned and/or operated Westwood Hills Golf Course for three decades, and some even took up residence in the neighborhood.

Jim McNulty, great-grandson of the golf course founder, grew up on Westwood Hills Curve and in the early 2010s e-mailed me a small trove of photos of Westwood Hills Golf Course. A handful spruced up the pages of my first golf book, Fore! Gone. Minnesota’s Lost Golf Courses, 1897-1999 (it’s a great Father’s Day gift idea, and should you have an inclination to buy it, please buy directly from Amazon rather than a third-party seller). The more I found out about Westwood Hills — visited by the likes of Patty Berg, Joe Louis, Les Bolstad and thousands more — the more smitten I became. It remains my favorite Minnesota lost golf course among the 228 I have identified.

Last month, my e-mail inbox was graced again by a message from Jim McNulty. He forwarded a dozen “new” old photos of Westwood Hills. He has graciously allowed me to share them, so here we go.

I am interspersing the photos with passages about Westwood Hills from Minneapolis newspapers. The sum total is not intended to be a definitive club history, but  there are some interesting nuggets.

The photos do not correspond with the text entries or the dates on them. I believe most are from the 1950s.

To Jim McNulty, continued thanks.

The Westwood Hills clubhouse sat on high ground near the corner of what is now Westwood Hills Drive and W. 18th Street. Jim McNulty said the views were impressive, and the subsequent photos will show the vistas and the golf course’s rolling terrain.

 1929

Minneapolis Star, June 28: “The Westwood Hills Country club will be opened tomorrow afternoon with Ray and Ronnie Espinosa playing Frank Smeed, course manager, and Ernest Penfold of the Minneapolis Golf club. The exhibition will start at 2 p.m. The course will be open for play after the match.”

Star advertisement, July 12:

PLAY GOLF at Westwood Hills

18-hole championship course

Natural hazards and terrain admirably suited to sporty golf. Creeping bent grass greens. A nine-hole pitch shot course for practicing approaching and putting. Free driving range.

15 minutes from Loop

How to get there — First turn to left after passing U.S. Fox Farm on Superior Boulevard. Two and one-half miles west on Cedar Lake Road.

For Reservations – Call Orchard 9080

1930

Minneapolis Tribune, May 7: “Par on the Westwood Hills fee golf course has been increased from 71 to 72, following enlargement and improvement of the links. … Hole No. 13 now has a water hazard. Hole No. 14 has been lengthened from 420 yards to 575, and is now a par five instead of par four.”

1934

Star, April 13: “Next Sunday will be a gala day at Westwood Hills golf club when the next nine holes, completing a 27-hole layout, will be inaugurated and Lester Bolstad will make his formal debut as a professional. … Westwood Hills is the only course in this section that has 27 holes in its layout.”

Tribune, April 29: The Tribune’s Chandler Forman detailed the new nine holes, which were mixed with some old ones. Thirteen new holes were created, six of them on the old second nine. “The course is laid out over many acres of beautiful and rolling terrain,” Forman wrote.

Highlights:

“No. 20, 355-yard par 4 – This was constructed from the old thirteenth, and beautified by filling the lake in front of the tee with water. One of the strongest holes on the course, with a high hill to carry, as well as the water hazard.”

“No. 22, 540-yard par 5 — A double dogleg and the feature hole of the course. Very narrow tree-lined fairway. White birches, pines, oak and huge elms.”

“No. 24, 380-yard par 4 — An ideal type of hole, tough for a low handicap player and fairly simple for the dub. A good golfer can take a chance and cut over trees at elbow, while the dub has an easy route around.”

Star, Sept. 13: “Les Bolstad, club professional, established a new course record on the first and third nines of the 27-hole layout at Westwood Hills Golf club Tuesday, putting together a 33 and a 34 for for a 67 to be four under par figures. He was playing with Bob Meyers of Interlachen.”

1939

Tribune, May 6: “Patty Berg, Minneapolis’ little uncanny wizard of the fairways, hung up another women’s golf record Friday when she toured Westwood Hills in 73 strokes, only one over men’s par. Patty moved over from Interlachen with her father, H.L. Berg, Lee Lockwood and Marsh Nelson, to practice at Westwood for her exhibition golf week match there next Tuesday with Gunnard Johnson, Bea Barrett and Bill Kaiser of Louisville.

“(Berg) finished with a sensational four on the long par five eighteenth, which would be par six for women as it’s nearly 550 yards in length. The women’s national champion laid an iron shot three feet from the cup for an easy four.”

Berg termed Westwood Hills “really remarkably good for a public course.”

Star-Journal, Aug. 13: The newspaper reported that total yardage on the 27 holes was 9,405, and that 100 men were members. “The women’s group, organized in 1936 with 20 members, now limits its membership to 65 and has a constant waiting list.

“Lester Bolstad, then pro at the club, helped the women organize. He and Gunner (sic; it was Gunnard) Johnson, the present pro, have developed both this group and the Ladies’ Tuesday Evening Group …”

In this photo, the Minneapolis skyline can be seen on the horizon. 

1943

Tribune, June 1: “Over 450 golfers played Westwood Hills Monday as Russ Welch, Len Peterson and Charles Vrooman won 36-hole Memorial Day medal play prizes.”

Morning Tribune, May 1: A small ad served this notice: “In respectful memory of John C. McNulty, Westwood Hills Golf Course will not be open today.”

John and James McNulty were in the grain business and co-owners of Westwood Hills GC. James, listed at this time as “still owner” of WH by the Star, died in March 1945 in Glendale, Calif.

1946

A March 3 Tribune story noted that “three residential additions are being platted, one taking nine holes from Westwood Hills golf course for 150 lots, the homes to be sold in the $12,000 to $15,000 class.”

By 1946, the course was advertised as 18 holes, but an October 1947 Star story noted that construction had started with an intent “to open three nines next spring.”

1947

Star, March 22: ” ‘Please,’ moaned Pat Johnson, ‘tell ’em to stop ringing my phone.’

“Manager of the Westwood Hills golf course, Johnson has been swamped with telephone calls since The Star reported Thursday that Westwood might become a private club this summer.

“Every golfer in town wants to join, apparently.

“But Johnson said today that no decision will be made on whether the club will be public, private or semi-private until the matter of an estate is settled. … Westwood might remain a public course anyway, because the club did well financially a year ago, and R.J. McGuire, present owner, contemplates no change.”

On June 20, 1947, McGuire took out a classified ad advertising his stone rambler. “Sacrifice for quick sale,” the ad read in part.

I confess I hadn’t heard of McGuire before this, but I believe Robert McNulty and John McNulty became Westwood Hills’ owners shortly after this ad appeared.

1949

Star, April 8: “Westwood Hills golf course was open today … on 12 holes of its 18 holes.”

The note was intended simply to say early-season conditions kept the course from being fully open, but it serves notice that WH was an 18-holer by then.

1950

Star, July 11: “John McNulty probably doesn’t know it, but he’s growing lettuce on his Westwood Hills golf course. Owner McNulty just opened three new holes on the first nine. But these fairways were used as farmland during the war, and despite the reconditioning job, an occasional lettuce leaf peeks up through the sod.”

Stories have been told about golfers getting lost while playing at Westwood Hills and straying onto the adjacent, private grounds of Minneapolis Golf Club. And vice versa. On Aug. 23, 1950, the Morning Tribune, in coverage of the U.S. Amateur being played at MGC, wrote: “Two women golfers apparently got lost as they were playing Westwood Hills, which adjoins Minneapolis Golf club. Carrying their golf bags, they wandered up to the 10th green. But they must have decided they didn’t care to play before a huge gallery, because they turned and went back to Westwood.”

1953

Tribune, July 26: “Ole Williamson set a new course record Saturday at Westwood Hills golf course.

“Williamson scored a 66 on rounds of 32-34, a new standard for the layout since it was changed a few years ago.”

On July 12, a Tribune story on Bolstad, the former pro at Westwood Hills and now a legendary figure in Minnesota golf, led with a recollection from Herman Berg Sr., father of future LPGA legend Patty Berg, taking his young daughter to Westwood Hills to work on her short game and practice out of sand. “She already had a swing,” Bolstad said.

 
1954

A Star story in April suggested co-owner John McNulty (with brother Bob) would be listening more seriously to offers to purchase the course, citing the tax burden. The course consisted of 18 holes, and a 16-tee lighted driving range was being built.

Westwood Hills’ practice green was distinctive. Situated just to the east of the clubhouse, it was surrounded by a hedge.

A 1937 aerial photo, taken from the University of Minnesota’s John Borchert Map Library, shows the hedged practice green as a lightly shaded rectangle near the bottom right corner, with the clubhouse alongside to the left (west). Holes on Westwood Hills fan out in different directions, notably to the west and slightly north, on what is now Westwood Hills Nature Center. Also visible are some greens on Minneapolis Golf Club, as well as the clubhouse, in the bottom-left corner of the photo.

1956

The Tribune noted in June that a new green fee schedule had been set: $1.60 for 18 holes weekday, $1.90 Saturday-Sunday.

1957

Westwood Hills and the city of St. Louis Park are in negotiations to sell all or part of the 27-hole course. Play continued through the season, with a plan to divide the land among a nine-hole municipal course, a park site and residential development.

1961

Tribune, June 2: “Westwood Hills golfers watched curiously while a band of ducks casually waddled across the fifth fairway.”

That is the last mention of Westwood Hills as an operating golf course that I know of. Sixty years later, at least one green site is still visible, hidden among trees and brush in the Westwood Hills Nature Center.

As the saying goes, Westwood Hills Golf Course had a good run.

Caledonia Golf Club: The city’s first of four

Lost golf courses,

Time for a belated thank-you note. Very belated.

Ninety-four years belated.

Thank you, Martin Rosaaen.

For much of his life, Martin T. Rosaaen farmed 80 acres in Houston County, Minnesota, alongside State Highway 44, a mile and change north of the city of Caledonia. It’s unknown whether he ever struck a golf ball sideways or otherwise with a hickory-shafted niblick, but he is a notable figure in the development of the game in the southeastern corner of the state.

Which merits a thank you from me because, well, Caledonia is my hometown, the place where I not only learned to strike golf balls sideways and otherwise but also learned a bit about the history of the game — even if the concept of a lost golf course was foreign to me until many years after Martin’s passing.

Rosaaen’s connection to golf is more coincidental than direct, but it was upon his rolling farmland that play began at Caledonia Golf Club, established Aug. 12, 1926. The Rosaaen plot was the first of four upon which golfers from Caledonia and a half-dozen other nearby cities have spent some of their down time in the past near-century.

When I started researching Minnesota’s lost golf courses in earnest in 2012, I was told about the lost course on the Anna Bowers farm at the southwestern corner of town that lasted from 1926-41. (Though I wrote it that way in “Fore! Gone,” it appears a correction is in order, as the Rosaaen course preceded the course on the Bowers land.) I learned soon after that of the lost course on the Peter Koenig property near the northwestern corner of the city that existed only in 1949 and maybe part of the 1950 season. And I had been told by my uncle, the recently deceased Bob Schwartzhoff, that there had been another lost course, north of town “on the Beranek farm.” I never have figured out where the Beranek farm was, even after checking many historical plat maps and asking a few locals.

I still don’t know if there was a Beranek farm, and if so where it was, but I recently came across a newspaper clip that confirmed a lost course north of town.

Enter Martin Rosaaen.

The Winona Daily News of Aug. 13, 1926, reported on the establishment of Caledonia Golf Club, relating that “at least 50 members are expected to join the organization as well as a considerable number of Spring Grove people.” (Spring Grove is the next city west of Caledonia.) “… The location of the course has not been fully decided upon,” the Daily News reported.

The previous day’s Daily News had offered slightly more detail, saying the course would be nine holes and the proposed location “has been pronounced very fine by Arthur Bakken, La Crosse golf professional.” (His name was Arthur Bakkum, but whatever.)

A La Crosse Tribune story from July 21, 1927, confirms the location of the new course.

“Caledonia finally has secured a golf course after a struggle of over a year,” the newspaper reported. “… To Martin Rosaaen living north of Caledonia the golf bugs of Caledonia owe their appreciation for what they have to play on. Martin has a nice pasture and for a year or more has given his permission to those who want to knock a ball around to go to it to their hearts content. While there is not much to the course as yet it is a start and the wise birds say that is all that is needed to get a real club and course going.”

The wise birds had it half right. The course on Rosaaen’s farm got going, but it didn’t last long.

Two newspaper stories from 1927 reported that the Rosaaen farm had been put into play for golf that season — and plans were in place for something even better the next year.

“Work has progressed rapidly in the Caledonia golf course during the past week,” the Daily News reported on May 3, 1928. “Sunday saw quite a large crowd of fans at the newly improved course which is about one mile north of town on Highway No. 44.

“A gravel driveway now leads into the grounds and ample parking space is provided. The course is nine holes with natural hazards to make any golfer use all his skill. One hole is 500 yards long.”

A Tribune story from February 1928 also noted impending improvements to the Rosaaen course, including the elimination of  — horrors! — crossing fairways.

Rough outline of the Martin Rosaaen farm, 1937 photo, John Borchert Map Library, University of Minnesota. This aerial photo is a decade removed from Caledonia Golf Club occupying part of this site. Rosaaen and his wife, Emma, had since moved to Caledonia, and the property at this time was owned by Leonard Wohlers, who was married to Rosaaen’s daughter Emelia. The intersection near the top of the photo is Minnesota Highway 44 and Houston County Road 10, also known as Angus Drive. I’m not positive Rosaaen’s farm extended this far south.

But as the 1929 golf season approached, plans had changed. “Caledonia Starts New Golf Course,” read a headline in the Winona Daily News of April 27, 1929.

“The Caledonia Golf club has concluded negotiations for a ten-year lease of the Bowers farm from Mrs. Anna Bowers, and now arrangements are under way to convert this tract into a golf course. …

“Playing will continue on the old course until the new course is completed.”

The Rosaaen land appears to have been used by Caledonia golfers during the 1929 season and at least part of 1930. The Winona Daily News reported on April 1, 1930, that the club’s lease with Rosaaen was to expire on May 1 but that, until the Bowers plot was golf-ready, the Rosaaen course would be “kept in shape so that local golfers may limber up. Greens and fairways at the old location are in fair condition.”

The Bowers farm course was laid out by La Crosse Country Club professional Ted Smith and the aforementioned Bakkum, who judging by other newspaper stories was employed by the La Crosse club but likely wasn’t its head professional. Smith, a native of Australia, was an accomplished player, once shooting a 63 at La Crosse CC, and later became the pro at Somerset Hills Country Club in Bernardsville, N.J.

Caledonia Golf Club, 1937 photo, from John Borchert Map Library, University of Minnesota. Fairways are clearly visible. This course was near the southwestern corner of the Caledonia city limits. The road at the top of the photo is Houston County Highway 12, also (I believe this is right) known as Old 44.

The course on the Bowers farm had a nice run, operating until 1941. The short-lived Koenig farm course, designed by Winona Country Club pro Ben Knight, came next, and on Sept. 4, 1961, a grand opening ceremony was held at Ma Cal Grove Country Club, one mile north of town. That nine-hole course, still operating, was designed by Willie Kidd, the head pro at the famed Interlachen Country Club in Edina, Minn., and later a Minnesota Golf Hall of Fame inductee.

What became of the Rosaaen property? Honestly, it probably served better as agricultural land than as a golf course. In the early 1930s, it passed from Martin Rosaaen (who died in 1950) to Leonard Wohlers, husband of Rosaaen’s daughter Emelia. The Wohlerses owned the land into at least the 1970s, according to plat maps, and among the post-golfing animals that roamed their property were turkeys and Tennessee Walking Horses.

The property is now host of a house owned by Joe Welch, who owns and operates a heavy-equipment company in Caledonia. He is a member of Ma Cal Grove and — this is one of my favorite tidbits of Minnesota lost-course history — owns, in addition to the old Martin Rosaaen farm, the old Anna Bowers farm.

Everett Point, Tower: The rabbit hole turns north

Lost golf courses,

Searching for the possibility of a lost golf course in the next county over, I wound up six counties up and 206 miles away.

That’s a heck of a rabbit hole.

I’ll get back to that nearby lost course someday, if there actually is one. But I thought I’d pass along what I found when I started digging — for the first time since  More! Gone. was published a few weeks ago — for lost golf course No. 227 in Minnesota. (I’ll find it sooner or later.)

Flipping through, in a virtual-reality sense, the pages of old Minnesota newspapers, I came upon a short story on the lost Everett Point golf course near Tower. “Lake Vermilion has a new golf course,” read a headline in the Minneapolis Sunday Tribune of July 24, 1927.

“A new nine-hole course, known as the Everett Point golf course, has been officially opened at Lake Vermilion,” the story began. “A short road connecting highway No. 77 with the course was recently completed.”

I have written about the Everett Point course before. It was covered, in a manner of speaking, with four paragraphs near the end of my 2014 lost-course book, Fore! Gone. Minnesota’s Lost Golf Courses, 1897-1999.  The entry noted a 1926 Moorhead Daily News story that said the course would be “five miles from Tower by boat” and that greens fees would be $1.

Coming across the course again this week rekindled my interest. First, I tracked down a 1940 aerial photo of what must certainly have been the golf-course property, appearing in light gray (everything else is trees, road or water):

Here is a wider view of the area, again in 1940. Downtown Tower is about 4.5 miles southeast of the center of Everett Bay. You should be able to click on either photo for a zoomed-in view.

Aerial photos from digital files of John Borchert Map Library, University of Minnesota.

Zooming in on the top photo, I see no signs — whether greens or obvious fairway routings — that the golf course remained in operation in 1940. That makes me twice a liar, because in early references on my lost-course map, I credited the course with a life span of 1921-40. In reality, I suspect it was much shorter.

That covers about half the rabbit hole. Thing is, once I get started, it’s hard to stop myself. I learned more about the Everett Point golf course.

“The course has grass greens, and the yardage is 2,862,” the 1927 Tribune story continued. “The seventh and eighth fairways, especially, are difficult. In time it will be increased to 18 holes. It is owned by Brude Realty Co. of Virginia, but is open to the public.”

Looking at the 1940 aerial, it doesn’t appear that enough land had been cleared to accommodate an 18-hole course. I’m guessing plans were to clear almost the entirety of Everett Point and use it as a golf grounds.

To that end, a story from the Minneapolis Morning Tribune of May 11, 1928:

“Everett Point Links Will Be Expanded,” read the headline. The story reported that five fairways ran parallel to water and that golfers were never out of sight of Lake Vermilion. “The course will be expanded to 18 holes within a year or two,” the story continued.

“James Hunt of Minneapolis, golf course architect and manager of the Country club course in Minneapolis, is a director of the Everett Point club and is supervising the improvements. Earl M. Barrows of Minneapolis will supervise the reconstruction of the greens, the present sod to be replaced by Washington bent grass. Harold Riddle of Minneapolis was professional last year.”

Further burrowing into the rabbit hole required. …

It’s clear there was a concerted effort by parties with Twin Cities connections to make the Everett Point course work. And there were typos in the Tribune story (not throwing shade here. I confess I’ve generated a typo or seven hundred in my newspaper days.).

The aforementioned James Hunt likely was James A. Hunter, original designer of the Country Club (now Edina Country Club), Superior Golf Club (now Brookview) and the lost course at Princeton on the Rum River, to name three. Earle Barrows was a key figure in the development of Bloomington Golf Club (now Minnesota Valley), and he designed Crow River Golf Club in Hutchinson. Hunter and Barrows combined to design one of my favorite lost courses, the Hilltop Public Links course in Columbia Heights.

Everett Point was a par-35 course, according to a 2017 Ely Timberjay story. No. 8 likely was the “signature hole,” decades before that term could be coined and recoined ad nauseam. “No. 8 hole,” the Tribune reported, “a 140 yard shot, is considered by experts to give the average golfer something to think about. This short hole is laid around a cove. A shot across the cove and over the tops of trees on the far side of the cove will land the ball on the green in one. The cautious lad, who has an eye on his ball bag, will shoot around the short dog leg. Par is three.”

Shades of No. 16 at Cypress Point, North Star State style, if you ask me.

Riddle was another Everett Point figure with Twin Cities connections. I didn’t piece together his entire golf résumé, but among the entries of this remarkably itinerant — one might say rabbit-like in the way he hopped around — professional were these: amateur playing out of the Country Club, 1925; Everett Point pro, 1927; Grand Rapids pro, 1928; Hilltop, 1929 and ’30; unattached pro competitor, 1933; Gall’s (now Manitou Ridge) in White Bear Lake, 1934; unattached again, 1935; and then to Watertown Golf Club (now Prairie Winds) in South Dakota in 1937 for what appears to have been a longer stint.

Back to Everett Point: I don’t think the course lasted much past 1930. I found one reference to it in a 1930 newspaper article but nothing after that. It does, however, have a successor of sorts. I reported in “Fore! Gone.” of speculation that some of the Everett Point golf course land lay on what is now the acclaimed Wilderness at Fortune Bay course on the Bois Forte Band of Chippewa Reservation. But that could not have been the case, as the lost course lay entirely north of Everett Bay and the current Fortune Bay course is south of it.

Just one more thing, in case you inexplicably ignored the link near the top of this post and have failed to make the purchase: My second lost-course book is out. It is titled “More! Gone. Minnesota’s Lost Golf Courses, Part II,” and features more than 30 lost courses that weren’t covered in “Fore! Gone.” including rollicking tales from Pine City and Luverne, a tight squeeze near Winona and a historic course near Lake Minnetonka. It’s available here, on Amazon.com.

Now available: “More! Gone.”

Golf history, Lost golf courses,

So many more lost golf courses, so many more stories to tell.

So why not? I decided to tell a few more, with quotes like this, one of many regarding a  colorful gentleman who put up a nine-hole course, designed by a Minnesota Golf Hall of Famer, on his ranch-slash-farm-slash-racecourse in Pine County:

“He drove a 16- cylinder Cadillac … big as a railroad train.”

My second lost-course book, “More! Gone. Minnesota’s Lost Golf Courses, Part II,” is finished and on its way to Amazon’s website via its KDP publishing platform. (If you’re interested in self-publishing, KDP is a great venue for it.)

I’m expecting Amazon to activate a link to “More! Gone.” by the end of the weekend, or maybe earlier. I’ll publish that link here as soon as it’s available.

UPDATE, July 16: The book is now available for ordering on Amazon. Here is the link:

More! Gone. is available here.

An Amazon link to my first lost-course book, “Fore! Gone. Minnesota’s Lost Golf Courses, 1897-1999,” is below, and below that, a list of cities and towns with lost courses covered in the second book.

Order Fore! Gone. here.

Cities with courses in “More! Gone.”:

Ada

Albert Lea

Cass Lake

Cold Spring

Deephaven

Donehower / Dakota

Fergus Falls

Foley

Foreston

Hastings

Hinckley

Lakeville

Luverne

Madelia

Marshall

Milaca

Minneapolis

Oakdale

Pokegama Township, Pine County

Pine City

Princeton

Red Lake Falls

Richmond

Rochester

Rush City

St. Augusta

St. Cloud

St. Joseph

St. Paul

Sauk Rapids

Shorewood

Twin Valley

Winona

And one outlier.

 

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.