Category Archives: Lost golf courses

Weequah, St. Paul: Golf, or just boats and such?

Golf history, Lost golf courses, ,

During a decade of searching for lost golf courses, I’ve found a few. Well, it isn’t fair to say I found them, because, as anonymous as they might be 100 years later, they were of course known about by someone, somewhere, sometime. And I just pieced together spare parts for the purpose of telling a story.

The best example I can think of is Silver Creek in Rochester, a century-old lost course that as far as I can figure was known to only a handful of Minnesotans before it was uncovered to some degree in a March 2017 post on this site. It was a historically important course, to boot.

But as an unknown or virtually unknown place, Silver Creek is just the tip of a lost-course iceberg.

As of the moment I’m writing this, there are 231 entries on my list-slash-map of Minnesota’s lost golf courses, viewable here. I’d guess there are 50 to a hundred more that I don’t know about. Maybe more.

Then there are places I know about, but I don’t know for sure whether an organized golf course ever existed there.

Weequah, for instance.

Golf near the shores of Lake Phalen in St. Paul predates 1925. Phalen Golf Course was the city’s first public course, established in 1917 near the lake’s western shore. Judging by aerial photographs and one close-up (below), the current verdant and tree-lined Phalen GC doesn’t look a lot different than it did in its early years, save for the sand greens.

Phalen Golf Course postcard photo, likely dating to the 1920s or early ’30s.

Less than a mile east of Phalen GC, across the neck of of Lake Phalen, lay home base for the Weequah Canoe Club.

“At 1492 East Shore Drive is the clubhouse of the Weequah Canoe Club, built in 1924 by Swedish businessmen,” wrote Donald Empson in his book “The Street Where You Live: A Guide to the Place Names of St. Paul.”

Empson continued: “A few years later, after establishing a golf course, it became the Weequah Country Club; today it is a private residence.”

A golf course on the east side of Lake Phalen? Never heard of such a thing. Nor had the handful of people I talked to about it.  Nor could I find a reference to golf at Weequah in online searches of newspaper archives, nor in a one-hour search (that’s certainly not expansive) of St. Paul Pioneer Press and Dispatch archives from the mid-1920s. (I would have looked harder, but those newspapers are archived at the Minnesota History Center, which because of the pandemic I visited that one and only time in 2021, and I have no plans to return soon. Also, note updates at the bottom of this post.)

The Weequah Canoe Club dates to 1913 or before, that date being the earliest reference I could find online. The club participated in rowing events on Lake Phalen and beyond. As for whether golf  was ever played onsite, understandable skepticism was offered last year by the man who lives at the St. Paul address of the former Weequah Canoe Club and who owns background knowledge.

The Weequah club “had a locker room, Bar & Grill, Pool Table, and a large dance floor that led out onto the veranda port hall,” wrote William Zajicek in an online message. “They also had a tennis court and a golf club but to the best of our knowledge used the golf course across the lake in Phalen Park.”

That’s a perfectly logical supposition, though it pits Zajicek’s understanding (no golf course on the Weequah grounds) against Empson’s (yep and fore!).

Zajicek suggested in a subsequent message that he suspected the area surrounding Weequah at that time was not topographically fit for a golf course.

“The Weequah,” Zajicek wrote, “is built on a sand ridge that runs parallel to the lake shore starting at Arlington (Avenue) and going to the north toward a larger plateau. You can see the creek/drainage area behind the Weequah which led to the lake. The area to the east, I was told, required a good deal of fill before it could be developed in the ’50s.”

I’m not going to profess to know more about the surroundings than Zajicek. No way. But I’ll assert that a lot of golf courses, from living to long-expired, have been built on land not well-suited for golf. Notably among Minnesota lost courses,, there was the old Memorial Field course in Mankato, which briefly operated in a veritable swamp in the late 1930s.

Back to Weequah … aerial photographs also make me wonder.

From John Borchert Map Library digital files, University of Minnesota

The photo above shows Lake Phalen and the area to the east in 1923. The Weequah club, if I understand correctly, was along the road on the eastern shore — I believe near the bright-white spot where the road turned from directly north-and-southbound to a more diagonal angle. The suggestion is that the immediately surrounding land, including the creek that can be seen in the photo, was low-lying and not conducive to golf. That likely is true. But north of that, and east of the creek (in the right-center area of the photo), lies an area dotted with trees. It wouldn’t have been exactly out the backdoor of the Weequah Club but would have been only a few hundred steps from it. I swear it’s not outlandish to visualize tree lines between which golf fairways could have lain. I ran this theory past someone familiar with the look of old golf courses in historic aerial photos, and he didn’t see it as I did. But I haven’t wavered. I’m also thinking this spot of lightly wooded land was on higher ground than what’s to its southwest, and would have been about the right size for five to nine golf holes.

For purposes of modern-day context, I’m suggesting this this “golf-able” land would have been just west of the thin, light vertical line on the aerial photo, which I believe is now the Bruce Vento Regional Trail and originally was the St. Paul and Duluth Railroad. English Street runs nearby and close to parallel. Today, this is a residential area, near Hoyt and Idaho avenues and Chamber Street.

I know little else about Weequah, whether as canoe club, country club (i.e. with golf course) or just plain club-club. A 1922 Minneapolis Star story reported there were about 220 members. The latest reference I could find to it being an existing club came in 1940. A 1924 entry in “Minnesota and Its People” listed St. Paul dentist Daniel O. Ostergren as a Weequah Club member, “fond of fishing, motoring and playing golf.”

As with other places I’ve heard about over the years, I’ve left it up to — well, me, a committee of one — to decide whether a place in question is a lost golf course or just a slice of fiction. (If I’m the only one who cares, be that as it may.) So I have to render my own verdict, and I’ll do that with Weequah:

I’m saying, on admittedly thin evidence, there once was an organized golf grounds at Weequah. And I’m calling it a lost golf course — No. 232 on the list.

As always, feel free to enlighten or correct me if you have knowledge, or just want to speculate, or just want to call me a crackpot. I can take it.

Next: a few other venues I’m not sure about. I had planned to include them here, but I grossly exceeded my entirely mythical word-count limit.

Update, Jan. 29, 2022: I have received two items that shed light on Weequah, though they don’t solve the mystery of whether there was a course on the grounds.

The first is a display of Weequah golf champions, passed along by the aforementioned William Zajicek. To my surprise, it covers the years 1921 to 1937, a much longer period of time than I suspected the golf club existed, and now it suggests to me that there might not  have been a course on the site, if it lasted that long while the surrounding area began to see more residential development.

Courtesy of William Zajicek

Below is an aerial photo of the area in 1940, again from the Borchert Library website. Yes, residential development had begun, notably along English Street, but the area remained mostly devoid of buildings.

The other item is an entry in “Tee Party on the Green,” a 1925 publication that covered goings-on in Minnesota golf. On the “Twin Cities Miscellany” page, an entry mentioned that “Karl Karlson led the qualifiers in the Weequah Country club’s annual championship golf tournament with a net score of 140 for the 36 holes.” Interestingly, other Miscellany entries mention tournaments played by civic organizations or groups, but those always mentioned at which course the event was played. The Weequah entry included no such caveat, such as “played at the Phalen links,” thus suggesting Weequah had a layout of its own.

In any event, Weequah remains largely a mystery to me.

More golf, fewer losses; Forest Lake origins

Lost golf courses

2021 was a banner year for Minnesota golf courses. For lost courses? Not so much.

Cumulatively, that’s a very good thing.

Regarding the former, Minnesotans played a lot of golf in 2021. And then they played more. A December news release by the Minnesota Golf Association set the increase in rounds played across the state at 6.9 percent for the year, with 1.6 million rounds played by MGA members alone. That’s on the heels of a 2020 season in which rounds surged upward by 31.5 percent, driven largely by pandemic restrictions placed on other outdoor activities.

A residual effect from the past two years? Fewer lost golf courses. I can’t unequivocally say that one phenomenon (more golf) contributed to the other (fewer lost courses), but the connection seems obvious. As far as I know, only two Minnesota courses permanently shut down in 2021: The Ponds at Battle Creek in Maplewood (established 2004) and Rich Valley in Rosemount (pictured below, established 1998). It’s entirely possible there were more, though, and if you know of others, please let me know, if only so I can keep my lost-course map and list of courses that have closed since 2000 as up to date as possible.

Rich Valley Golf Course, Rosemount, October 2021, weeks before permanent closure. The course had been in the Ray Rahn family since its inception in 1998. The family also designed and established Parkview in Eagan (now a lost course) and Fountain Valley in Farmington, which was sold in 1980. Sadly, it was reported on Rich Valley’s Facebook page that some pathetic soul or souls made off with a handful of Rich Valley’s tee markers in the club’s final month. The family deserves to have them back, so ‘fess up.

That the roll of Minnesota lost courses grew by only two is significant. The trend toward losing courses left and right, north and south, hill and valley, has slowed appreciably. Two more in 2021 makes for a total of 85 since 2000. But the 2021 total was a small increase, and if you ask me, it signals the slowing of a market correction that began shortly after 2000, when it became clear the course-building boom of the 1990s had oversupplied Minnesota with golf venues, and nearly two decades of shuttering began.

Self-reflection

On a personal note, 2021 was my slowest year in golf since I was about 6, i.e. 171 years ago. When I was 7, when my dad sawed off a hickory-shafted 2-iron, wrapped electrical tape around the shaft (what other kind of tape would an electrician use?) and handed it to me, and off I went. My previous posts on this blog this year total exactly one. Two reasons: One, after spending a decade identifying, researching and writing about 231 lost courses in one state alone, I am left feeling a bit spent on the subject; and two, because of the pandemic, access to the Minnesota History Center, where I have done most of my research since about 2016, has been severely limited (only one visit this year).

I will, however gladly pass on a few nuggets from 2021, in this post and the next.

Forest Lake origins

Erik Espe of Baxter, a keen Minnesota golf history aficiando, passed along the photo below, inscribed “Picnic of the First National Bank of St. Paul, and Affiliated Institutions. Lakeside Country Club, Forest Lake. July 17, 1929.” (Click on the image for a closer look.) He wondered if I had any familiarity with the place, and I answered that I had little certain knowledge.


Some digging revealed a few details, albeit not a complete story. Spoiler alert: This place is not a lost course.

To amplify Espe’s inquiry, what and/or where was Forest Lake Country Club?

I knew that the consensus of citations on the origins of golf in Forest Lake place Castlewood, a nine-hole public course not far off the south shore of Forest Lake, as having been established in the 1920s, and Forest Hills Golf Club, an 18-hole private just a half-mile to the southeast, as established in 1962.

The Forest Hills opening date is essentially not in dispute, though I’ve seen claims of  starting dates as early as 1958 and as late as 1968 (and the club’s website doesn’t really help, considering its “Our History” tab features no information). But it isn’t Forest Hills that captures my particular interest. It’s Forest Hills’ northern neighbor that does.

Castlewood, also known today as “The Rock,” was established in 1920, according to the club’s website. There are, however, multiple sources that claim starting dates of 1925 or 1927. Here is where I issue a large caveat and asterisk: Without access to the History Center and local newspaper archives, I can’t say for sure which year is correct — if either.

But I can guess, and I’m guessing 1927 is the best guess. Among websites listing that starting date, GolfLink gets a shout-out from me.

I conducted searches of online Minnesota newspaper archives, most prominently the Minneapolis Tribune and Minneapolis Star, and could not come up with a reference to a golf course in Forest Lake in 1925 or before. When I reset the search parameters to 1930 or before, there were many results, including this:

“Forest Lake Club  to Open Nine-Hole Course Next Month,” read the headline in the Minneapolis Tribune of April 13, 1927.

Text from the story: “The course, situated on the south short of Forest lake, was begun under the promotion of J. M. Hegge last year when fairways were graded and seeded. Work of installing sand greens is under way and is expected to be completed within 30 days. Grass greens will be substituted as soon as practicable.

“A $100,000 club house has been built and several cottages are provided for vacationists. Barney Carlson, former pro at Phalen, will have charge of the course.”

This is not to say there couldn’t have been a golf course on the Castlewood site or elsewhere in Forest Lake before 1927, but the Tribune story suggests that is the year organized golf was first played in the city.

In the Tribune story, the reference to the clubhouse is telling. A hundred grand would have bought you a lot of clubhouse in 1927, a lot more than, say, a shack with a rusty mower, a cooler full of ale and sarsaparilla, a card table and three rickety chairs. Look again at Espe’s photo, and you get what most certainly was your $100,000 clubhouse along the shore of Forest Lake (a body of water is visible in the photo’s background).

As for the reference to Lakeside Country Club? The Tribune of April 21, 1929, enlightens:

“The Lakeside Country club at Forest Lake, operating a public course for the past two seasons, will be opened April 27 as a private club. The nine-hole course which measures 3,555 yards is in excellent condition, witht (sic) fine fairways and grass greens. The club has a membership of 350.”

Further digging revealed a smattering of newspaper stories about the golf course and considerably more about the clubhouse. It was variously referred to as Forest Lake Town & Country Club,  Lakeside Golf Club and Forest Lake Country Club. A 1930 Tribune story said it was an 18-hole course; entries in 1938 and 1940 newspapers called it a nine-holer.

As for the clubhouse, it hosted many get-togethers, to wit:

— A “Les Sept” outing (no, I don’t know what that is either) was held at Lakeside Country Club, with golf and swimming, according to the Minneapolis Tribune of Aug. 12, 1929.

— The Tribune ran multiple short items on Lakeside Country Club from 1929-31, including  references in 1930 and 1938 to an 18-hole golf course. Most items publicized picnics and civic or business gatherings. A June 1940 Star-Journal story reported the course was nine holes. The club was owned from 1933-51 by Edward Langan of St. Paul, according to a Tribune story.

— And Lakeside / Forest Lake Country Club was no modest clearing in the woods. A story in the Minneapolis Tribune off June 6, 1930, reported on a picnic that featured 2,000 Elks (not the antlered variety; they would have caused extensive damage) and families from Minneapolis. St. Paul, Stillwater and Hudson. Activities included dancing, vaudeville and card games.

That is as far as I’m willing to go with writing about Lakeside / FLCC, at least for now.  At some point, the course was renamed Castlewood, which remains its name today. I made inquiries about the club’s origins and history during late summer 2021 and thought I might receive more information, but that never happened. I will gladly post any comments on the club’s history, either in the comments section on this post or on a separate post.

Happy new year. Next: Unsolved mysteries, and a few odds and ends.

 

 

 

 

 

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. 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 Rosaaens.

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.