Tag Archives: Minnesota golf

Hutchinson Golf Club and its closest of relatives

Lost golf courses, ,

Next time you drive through west-central Minnesota and find yourself in the city of Hutchinson, turn north on California Street and head up to its intersection with 8th Avenue Northwest.

Goodness’ sake, don’t stop. Just drive past casually, don’t pull over, don’t knock on any doors, don’t draw any attention to yourself or the peace-seeking residents.

This is history, but no one has to know it.

No one has to care, either. And very few probably will. But I’ll fill you in anyway.

The intersection of California and 8th signals of one of the more unusual convergence of golf-course sites in Minnesota. That’s because you can look one way — just a few yards to the east — and see where ladies and gentlemen with hickory-shafted MacGregors used to four-putt the old sand green at Hutchinson Golf Club, or you can drive a few hundred more yards north on California, zip into a parking space at Country Club Manor apartments — don’t take a resident’s parking spot! — get out, and take a gander at Hutchinson GC’s immediate successor: Crow River Country Club.

Among Minnesota’s 200-plus lost golf courses, I can think of no other place where a golf club abandoned a course in one place and reopened so nearby, yet not on the same site, and not to mention so soon.

Have a look:

1940 aerial photo: grounds of Hutchinson Golf Club, designated “A,” and Crow River Country Club, designated “B.” The thin vertical line near the “A” is what would become California Street, with the golf course — it had been abandoned for one year at the time of this photo — to the right (east). The Crow River site, in the rectangle marked “B” and only nine holes at the time, is in its infancy, with Campbell Lake to the left (west). The “A” site can be distinguished as a golf course by bright, white circles, some of which were sand greens. Twin Oaks Apartments & Townhomes occupies much of that site today. Downtown Hutchinson is just off the bottom-right corner of the photo. (Courtesy University of Minnesota’s John Borchert Library. Click on the photo for a closer look.)

Incidentally, a third golf course — and second of the lost variety — also lies only a couple of hundred yards away. The Meadow Links course (1999-circa 2015) was just across McLeod County Highway 12, or Golf Course Road, from both the Hutchinson GC site and Crow River CC.

Hutchinson Golf Club got its start on the “California Street” site — albeit there was no such street at the time — in the late 1920s. On April 25, 1926, the Minneapolis Tribune reported, “The Hutchinson golf club has leased 35 acres of ground from D.S. Todd, about a mile west of the city, and will lay out a first class golf course. The officers of the club plan to have an expert here soon to lay out the course. The land is ideal, rolling and with good natural hazards.”

Typically, a new golf course would take about one season to grow in and be ready for play. That appeared to be the case in Hutchinson. A story in the May 22, 1927, Minneapolis Tribune again mentioned the purchase of the Todd land and a golf course of nine holes, par 34, 2,400 yards long, with sand traps and bunkers, a toolhouse and rain shelter and “a competent caretaker.” E.S. Noreen was club president, and the Leader reported that a flock of sheep would graze the site.

On June 17, 1927, the Hutchinson Leader reported that a club tournament would be held two days hence, with a fee of 25 cents for “eight holes.” The suspicion here is that the number of holes was misstated, because on June 24, the Leader reported that 23 players participated, with Charles Borkenhagen low man with a 43 “for nine holes.”

And here, an admission: Although it’s almost certain that golf in Hutchinson formally began a decade earlier, I whiffed on confirming that. The May Minneapolis Tribune story ran under the headline “Hutchinson Golf Club Enters Second Decade” but made no mention of a course that would have preceded the one on the Todd land. A source in the city said there had indeed been a predecessor, and that there was written confirmation of it, but no one ever got back to me with such confirmation. An update on this paragraph is at the end of the story.

Hutchinson Golf Club — on the Todd site — had about 75 members in 1926, the Leader reported. Play continued there through the 1930s. In 1932, new bunkers were added, and a membership drive brought in players from the nearby cities of Brownton, Glencoe, Stewart and Buffalo Lake. In May 1934, a clubhouse was moved from the site “of the old Triple L Hatchery to the southwest corner of the course at the No. 1 tee,” the Leader reported. This would have been near the current home of Hutchinson Auto Sales, just north of 4th Avenue Southwest/Highways 7 and 22. The caretaker in 1934 was Richard Ahlbrecht, and club president was Dr. W.L. Bahr.

The late 1930s brought about an itch to move.

“Golf Club Has Plans Ready,” the Leader reported on April 15, 1938.  Work was expected to start by May 1 on a new site, northwest of the Todd site and near Campbell Lake, and “a total of $6,000 was subscribed to build the new course.”

The previous month, the Leader had reported that Earle M. Barrows, “an expert in golf course construction,” had visited Hutchinson and obtained a contour map of the 54.5-acre plot owned by the W.E. Harrington estate on which a new course would be built, “with watered greens and fairways, and grass greens.”

Barrows had a solid golf background. He was in the real estate business, according to a 1920 Minneapolis city directory, and in 1923 was elected chairman of Bloomington Golf Club as that club evolved from the Automobile Club of Minneapolis. Bloomington GC, now known as Minnesota Valley, was the product of famed golf course designer Seth Raynor (a notion that, to be fair, is disputed by some golf historians, though there is little question Raynor’s influence came into play at Bloomington GC). Barrows also was an early golf turfgrass expert and collaborated with J.A. Hunter of Minneapolis to lay out the now-lost Hilltop Golf Links course in Columbia Heights (1926-46).

In July 1938, construction of the greens at the new Hutchinson course was in full force. The greens, the Leader reported, were to be seeded between Aug. 15 and Sept. 1 with Northern Bent grass. “The show green, No. 5, at the approach to the course, will be 7,000 square feet in size,” the newspaper reported. “With favorable conditions the course will be ready for play next summer, and all observers say it will be among the most beautiful and picturesque in the state.”

The new course, renamed Crow River Country Club by the Hutchinson GC members, opened in May 1939.  The Leader reported that it was 3,155 yards long, par 36, with these hole yardages: 360, 177, 446, 300, 200, 460, 415, 385 and 412. “Several greens are in the woods,” the newspaper said, “and the entire course overlooks the lake.” Edwin Nurse was retained as one caretaker, and Harvey Hoff was brought on as another. Work was being started on a clubhouse measuring 24 by 56 feet.

Crow River CC staged its first shortstop tournament on June 25, with an entry fee of $1. Entrants were from Hutchinson, Brownton, Buffalo, Buffalo Lake, Cokato, Dassel, Glencoe, Stewart and Winthrop. Cliff Popp won, with nine-hole rounds of 44, 43 and 43.

In 1978, Crow River expanded to the 18-hole layout it is today.

Update, May 2019: I found an update on the history of golf in Hutchinson in the “McLeod County History Book” of 1978. It identifies the city’s first lost golf course, plus one other that doesn’t quite meet muster as a full-fledged course (has to have at least six holes, in my opinion).

Golf in Hutchinson began, the history book reports, with four or five holes in a pasture on the Ingebretsen farm about three miles east of Hutchinson, southeast of a farmhouse bordering the Great Northern railroad tracks. In October 1923, a meeting was held to discuss renting land on the Herman Schmidt farm 2.5 miles northwest of town, on the northwestern shore of Otter Lake. That course’s first tournament was held on June 15, 1924 (making Hutchinson Golf Club I Minnesota lost course No. 207 on my list).

1916 plat map of area around northern Otter Lake in Hutchinson. The plot in red was owned by F. Schmidt and — best guess — is where the first full-fledged golf course in Hutchinson lay. Plat map from John Borchert Map Library, University of Minnesota.

Minnesota’s lost golf courses: Picture show

Two hundred lost golf courses later, I’m tired of writing.

For a day or two.

Having identified 12.66666666666667 dozen lost golf courses in Minnesota (I did the math on my computer’s calculator and copied the answer), no more purple prose for now. Just some of my favorite photographs. Limit one photo per lost course. And please, if for some reason you feel inclined to share any of these, feel free, but credit the source on the photo, if there is one.

Hover over the image with your mouse to see caption, and apologies for the rudimentary web display.

Also, in the event you might like to take a look at my updated Google map with all 200 lost courses, click here.

St. Cloud golf: A picture is worth a thousand … pars?

Golf history,

I could stare at this old golf photo for hours. Well, minutes, for sure, and that’s still saying something.

The image was forwarded to me by Tom Steman, university archivist and professor at St. Cloud State University. He dug this out of the SCSU catacombs or more likely old folders and passed it along to me after the two of us had a long discussion about the likely location of the lost course on the St. Cloud State campus.

The photo is not from the campus course. Steman noted, “We have the print of this image that appeared in a pamphlet/booklet advertising St. Cloud State that dates circa 1919.  The published photo appears in a section that shows images from around St. Cloud.  The caption simply says ‘Golf Links.’ ”

In all likelihood, this photo is of St. Cloud Country Club, perhaps in its inaugural season of 1919 (and more than a decade after the birth and death of St. Cloud Golf Club), which was not the same place. I have no other information or speculation to offer.

No more words. Take a look and, I hope, enjoy. (You can click on it for a larger view.)

One firm request: The photo is courtesy of the St. Cloud State University Archives and needs to be credited as such if anyone is inclined to share it.

St. Cloud and neighbors, Part I: An early, historic loss

Lost golf courses,

St. Cloud, Minnesota, can accurately be described by either of two monikers. Choose your favorite:

  1. “Granite City”
  2. “Central Minnesota’s Geographical Midpoint of Holy Cow That’s a Ton of Lost Golf Courses”

Picked the first one, didn’t you. Hard to argue. For one thing, “Granite City” does roll off the tongue easier than the abomination that is moniker No. 2. For another, the hard-and-durable construction rock — granite — has been harvested in and around St. Cloud since the 1880s, and, after all, golf in St. Cloud has been around only since 1899.

Yes, 1899. I’ll get to it.

Within 35 miles of the St. Cloud city limits, I know of  13 lost golf courses, not including two that never really qualified as full-fledged venues for whiffing and dubbing. This number dwarfs the mere two that I wrote about in “Fore! Gone.”:  the city-owned Hillside course in St. Cloud from 1930-45 and the nine-holer on the St. John’s University campus in Collegeville, circa 1926-33.

I’ll call this my St. Cloud lost-course mulligan. Allow me to cast light on a few more abandoned layouts. Just so you know, it’s going to take multiple posts. Also just so you know, by the time I’m done, I will have come up just shy of the 200 mark in identifying lost golf courses across Minnesota, so I’ll be designating with numbers as I go along.

THERE, AND NOT THERE

St. Cloud Country Club, which nestles up against the Mississippi River on the south side of the Granite City, is one of Minnesota’s classic old golf clubs. Established in 1919, it ranks among the first 35 or 40 clubs in state history. (A 2002 chronology of Minnesota golf courses ranks it among the first 26, but to be perfectly accurate, there are courses that the chronology missed.) St. Cloud CC has hosted one men’s State Amateur championship and two women’s State Ams. The course was, by all accounts that I know of, designed by the redoubtable Tom Vardon.

But it was not St. Cloud’s first golf course.

Take it from the May 10, 1899, edition of the St. Cloud Daily Times.

“NEW GOLF CLUB.” read the headline, with the story following.

“A meeting of those interested in the game of golf was held last evening in the council chambers and the St. Cloud Golf Club was duly organized with 27 charter members,” the newspaper reported. “… The membership fee was placed at $5. It is believed that a large number will become members of the new club as soon as the game is more thoroughly understood.”

To be clear: St. Cloud Golf Club (lost course No. 191), established 1899, and St. Cloud Country Club, established 1919, were, judging by every piece of information I have come across, separate organizations in separate places. There might have been coincidental carryover from GC to CC in the form of members or maybe bylaws, but they are/were not the same golf club.

Two weeks before the formal inception of St. Cloud GC, the Daily Times had offered other details.

Headline, April 24: “GOLF LINKS LAID.”

Story: “For some time the admirers of golf have been aggitating (sic) the formation of a club in this city and it is expected that such an organization will be formed this week.

“The links have been laid by Robert Foulis, of St. Paul, and he pronounces them as the equal of any in the cities, barring the fact that two railroad tracks are crossed here.

“The tee is located at the ball park, and the total length of the links are two and a fifth miles. From the tee to the first hole is 552 yards; to the second from this, 468; to the third, 250; fourth, 480; fifth, 512; sixth, 460; seventh, 296; eighth, 616; ninth, 360, making a total of 3,984 yards.

“The St. Cloud Golf club should start out with a large membership, and it undoubtedly will. O.H. Havill, Warren Freeman and H.R. Welsh are the promoters of the new club.”

Digging into the details:

— The 1899 start date makes St. Cloud Golf Club one of Minnesota’s first nine golf courses, by my count, matched or preceded only by Town & Country Club and Roadside of St. Paul; Winona Golf Club and Meadow-Brook of Winona; Bryn Mawr, Minikahda and Camden Park of Minneapolis; and Northland of Duluth. (This list updates revisions since this was first posted.)

— The mention of Robert Foulis is historically significant. Foulis is a larger-than-life figure from the first decade of Minnesota golf. He was a native Scotsman who worked for the legendary Old Tom Morris at his shop in St. Andrews, then moved to the Chicago area in 1895 and to St. Paul in 1896 as the first professional at Minnesota’s first golf course, Town & Country Club. Foulis’ talents included swing instruction, club making and course architecture. His design and redesign credits (some contributions are disputed) include Town & CC, Minikahda and the lost Bryn Mawr course in Minneapolis, Lake Forest (now Onwentsia) in the Chicago area and Bellerive in suburban St. Louis.

Foulis is correctly credited in some online and printed circles with the design of St. Cloud Golf Club, albeit without noting the distinction between GC and CC, and he is mistakenly credited in other references with the design of St. Cloud Country Club. Foulis hardly could have been involved in the Country Club design, as he had moved to the St. Louis area by 1901 and did most of his subsequent design work in Missouri.

— The length of the course is stunning. A nine-holer covering 3,984 yards, especially before the turn of the 20th century, would have been remarkably long, and a course with a longest hole of 616 yards and nothing shorter than 250 would be daunting even by today’s standards.

— As with so many lost courses, determining the course’s location can be confusing, confounding and ultimately not 100 percent confirmable. Such is the case with St. Cloud GC, though with the help of three researchers at the Stearns County Museum and a few hours of sleuthing on the side, I am more than 95 percent certain of this:

St. Cloud Golf Club was situated near the western edge of the city, near its border with Waite Park and not far north of Division Street. Best guess here and from the researchers is that the course opened near the intersection of 3rd Street North and 37th Avenue, not far from what is now BBC Park, and worked northward, eventually crossing the railroad tracks and probably onto land that is now part of the Electrolux Home Products plant.

Supporting evidence: 1) The reference to “the ball park” in the Daily Times story most likely refers to a baseball stadium in that part of town that underwent improvements in 1911 and 1925. A 1938 aerial photo of the area confirms a baseball park in that area; I have not been able to confirm whether it was St. Cloud’s primary baseball park at the time, but indications are that it was. 2) The reference to “two railroad tracks are crossed here” makes sense because of the two sets of tracks in that area (not to mention an older, out-of-service split and set of tracks just south of the in-service tracks). Also, an entry on St. Cloud Golf Club in the Harper’s Official Golf Guide of 1901 reported that the course was “one half-mile from Great Northern Railroad station, and accessible by street cars.”

Presumed area of the defunct St. Cloud Golf Club, taken from a 1938 aerial photo through the University of Minnesota’s John Borchert Map Library. Near the bottom-right corner of the photo is a baseball stadium, at or close to the golf course’s presumed starting point, and near the top are the railroad tracks that golfers are presumed to have crossed. Minnesota Highway 15 and part of the city of Waite Park are on the left side of the photo.
BBC Park in St. Cloud, near the presumed starting point of St. Cloud Golf Club. (Joe Bissen photo)

More than a century after St. Cloud Golf Club’s demise, it is impossible to determine anything about its character by scanning what is now flat, urban land. But perhaps a hint can be found in a post on a Northwest Hickory Players blog. In a reprinted interview with golf historian and Foulis expert Jim Healey, Healey described his impression of a typical Foulis course (note that Robert Foulis’ brothers James and David also were course architects):

“Typical of the day, their courses featured the traditional style of that era; namely medium to small greens, teeing areas quite close to previous greens, bunkers that fell into two categories, greenside bunkers with flat bottoms and cross-bunkers featuring tall mounding facing the player and sand on the opposite side.”

The Foulis brothers, from left, Robert, James and David (Wikimedia.org photo)

I don’t know how long St. Cloud Golf Club operated, though I’m thinking 1905 is a number that makes sense. A 1901 Minneapolis Journal story notes that St. Cloud golfers would meet with those of Grand Forks, Fargo, Jamestown, Winnipeg and Duluth to organize the Northwestern Golf Association. Newspaper reports show that St. Cloud competed against Bryn Mawr in inter-club competitions in 1902. In July 1903, a Minneapolis Journal story reported that St. Cloud would be among the new clubs with competitors in the state tournament — but a story in August 1903 from the same newspaper said that St. Cloud was not a Minnesota Golf Association member. An MGA all-time membership roll from 1920 does not list St. Cloud Golf Club as ever holding membership.

A 1904-05 St. Cloud city directory lists St. Cloud Golf Club, with E.H. Hill as president and H.C. Ervin as secretary-treasurer. (Harry Ervin also was secretary-treasurer of the Tileston Milling Company.) But I could not find St. Cloud Golf Club in any newspaper mentions after 1903, and it was not mentioned in a 1910 city directory. The presumption is that the Country Club took up the torch for St. Cloud golf nine years later.

Next: One of the St. Cloud area’s lost almost-courses.

 

Gonvick, Oklee, Clearbrook and one confused salesman

Lost golf courses, , ,

For a place so unassuming, the lost golf course at Gonvick did have its moments.

I never said they were momentous. I said only that they were moments.

The lost golf course with the prophetic name — Lost River Golf Course — was established shortly before 1960, according to the admittedly sketchy information I could come up with — one or two word-of-mouth accounts, nothing that I could find in black and white. The course was south of downtown Gonvick, a north-central Minnesota city of 282, and immediately south of Minnesota Highway 92, which cuts diagonally through the city. Just to the south of the lost-course grounds flows the Lost River, so named, it is said, because it once passed under a bog until the bogs were drained.

There was nothing assuming about Lost River Golf Course. It was a small, public nine-holer, so devoid of frills that one paid greens fees at a gas station just off the highway and then went off to play. The routing essentially consisted of seven par-3 holes that ringed two par-4s.

Still, even in a city whose population has never exceeded 375, Gonvick deserves kudos for carrying a golf course through approximately four decades. Lost River was said to have lasted until close to 2000 — again, I could never pin down an exact closing date, with at least a half-dozen sources differing on whether it made it into the 21st century.

“It was a shorter course, but people in the area did support it,” said Rick Fischer, who played Lost River as a youth in the early 1970s and who eventually went on to become the activities director at Sauk Centre High School. Fischer remembered that a drive-in, like the gas station basically adjacent to the golf course, served as the clubhouse, and Corinne Richards, editor of The Leader-Record newspaper of Gonvick and Clearbrook, remembered that patrons would bring side dishes to the drive-in for club events.

Richards also remembered Lost River Golf Course’s brush with international recognition. (It’s true, but I suppose I should issue a hyperbole alert.)

“We had an exchange student from Norway who played the course,” Richards said. When the student returned to his homeland, Richards added, he gained playing privileges at European courses by showing his Lost River membership card.

Fischer also remembered a kid from up the road in Bemidji sweeping into town in the early 1970s and taking the golf course by storm. The kid’s name was Bill Israelson, and Fischer recalled that “Izzy” was probably 12 or 13 years old and barefoot when he came down to Gonvick and won the Lost River shortstop.

That is confirmed, and double confirmed.

“Billy Israelson burned up the Gonvick course to repeat as champion” of the shortstop, the Bemidji Pioneer reported on Aug. 21, 1972, noting that Israelson’s winning score was 3 under par.

Israelson, who went on to win three Minnesota State Amateur championships and played on the PGA Tour, even briefly leading the 1982 U.S. Open at Pebble Beach, confirms the story.

“True,” Israelson, now the professional at The Vintage in Staples, wrote in a Facebook post. “I had won the junior flight the previous two years, so the tournament chairman said I had to play in the men’s championship. I beat my neighbor and defending champ in a playoff after shooting 1 over par for 27 holes. The Gonvick golf course had sand greens. And I had 28 putts for the 27 holes!!”

That’s not all.

“I also met my future wife, Sarah Daman, age 9, and beat her dad Jim who was also playing in champ flight!!”

And about those greens. Lost River likely was among the last half-dozen golf courses in Minnesota with sand greens, which once served to throw an out-of-towner for a loop.

“”We had a salesman who would come by,” said Richards, “and say, why are there flags in the sand traps? The answer was, they weren’t in the sand traps — they were in the greens.”

Lost River Golf Course in Gonvick, 1960 aerial photo. Downtown Gonvick is at the top-right of the photo; the golf course is in the open area just to the south of Minnesota 92. Sand greens are visible in the form of small circles. Photo from John Borchert University of Minnesota Map Library and Minnesota DNR Landview service. Later photos available at HistoricAerials.com show greater detail but won’t be published here because they would throw my operating budget of zero dollars and zero cents way out of whack.

OKLEE

Twenty miles northwest of Gonvick, crossing a couple of county lines from Clearwater to Polk to Red Lake, lies the city of Oklee, where the lost-course tale has similarities to the aforementioned Lost River course.

Both courses were small-town — Oklee’s estimated population is 418, having peaked from the low 500s from the 1960s through the 1980s, more or less the heyday of the Oklee golf course, which likely was in operation from the early 1960s to the mid-1970s.

A smattering of clips from the Oklee Herald provided sketchy details. The earliest I found was from April 1964, urging readers “Don’t Drive Vehicles to the Golf Course!” because the club’s sod had been cut up from previous excursions. A story from May 7, 1964,  detailed the club’s spring meeting, which drew an attendance of 36 and at which a membership fee of $5 was set. That story also referenced tournaments that had been played the previous year, which makes 1963 the closest guess I can make as to the course’s founding.

In 1967, the officers included club president Don Fournier. Fees were $7.50 for an annual family season membership and 50 cents per round for public play. (Those are remarkably low fees, even for 50 years ago.)

Better than the Oklee Herald clips, though, a couple of townsfolk offered more information.

“Oklee is pretty flat, so there were no hills (on the golf course), but there were sand traps, I was told,” wrote Bonny Cote, editor of the Oklee Herald. “It was located on the south end of town and today is the home of many houses and a few apartment buildings … also a City Park with picnic shelter, tennis and volleyball courts.”

Cote said she had an uncle who built the first apartment buildings on the grounds of the abandoned course in 1977.

Cote then referred me to Oklee resident Bob Melby, who offered even more salient memories.

The course, Melby wrote in an email, “was planned by a group of local businessmen and owned by the city of Oklee. The local dentist, Dr. Harold Lindquist,  was one of if not the lead person. It operated until the mid 1970s at which time it was developed for housing.

“It was a five hole course with sand greens. To play nine holes you replayed holes 1, 2 & 3 and then went from hole 3 to hole 5 for hole 9. Annual fees were 7.50 and daily green fees of .50. It was on an honor system as there was no management staff, although they hired a person to mow the grass. A wooden lock box at the first tee was where you would pay.

“In the first few years a slice on holes 1 or 5 would put you on the local High School football field and a hook on hole 4 put you among grain bins. I played some golf there in my teens to early 20s but I wasn’t involved in the operation.”

Teachers Mr. Nordquist, Mr. Hietala and Mr. Arzdorf at the Oklee golf course, circa 1966.
Aerial photo of Oklee in 1984. In the lower part of the photo with the large open area with just a few homes and apartment buildings is where the golf course course was. Photos courtesy of Oklee Historical Society.

CLEARBROOK

If the lost courses at Gonvick and Oklee were tough nuts to crack — I made at least 25 phone calls just to come up with the sketchy information presented above — the lost course at Clearbrook, or at least the likelihood of one, was tougher than a double-thick macadamia shell sealed with Krazy Glue.

Despite many inquiries, I never did definitively determine whether there once was a golf course in Clearbrook, the next town down Highway 92 southeast of Gonvick.

But I think there probably was.

I came across multiple references to a Clearbrook golf club having participated in Central Minnesota Golf Association and Red River Valley tournaments — in 1930, 1932, 1933 and 1934 — and of Clearbrook golfers playing in tournaments in 1931 in Bemidji (the Birchmont), and other courses in 1930, ’33 and ’34. The most accomplished appeared to be one Wayne Randall, who advanced to the semifinals of a Central Minnesota tournament in 1934 before losing 2 and 1 to D.N. Tallman of Willmar, a former Minnesota Golf Association president and now, posthumously, a member of the MGA Hall of Fame.

Eyeballing aerial photos of the Clearbrook area from 1939, the earliest readily available, revealed nothing that definitely looked like a golf course, extant or abandoned. But the preponderance of mentions in old newspapers establishes, in my mind, that there once was a golf course in Clearbrook.

As always, information or opinions on any of these places are most welcome.