Tag Archives: Minnesota golf

Island courses: Photo gallery

Elsewhere on this site, you can find my post on two long-lost Minnesota island golf courses, Coney Isle Golf Course in Waconia and Circle Island Golf Course in Rice County (Faribault/Northfield area). This post features some photos that I didn’t post in that story. I’ll apologize for not making this digitally more attractive, but that is beyond my current technological pay grade, which is to say zero.

CONEY ISLE

Left to right, top to bottom: The boat ride to Coney Island of the West on Lake Waconia; tall trees line the paths in Lake Waconia Regional Park; an old foundation, probably of a cottage; 1938 aerial photo shows partial view of Coney Island of the West – golf course area would have been at the far right (gleaned from University of Minnesota’s John Borchert Map Library); shore landing near the site of the old Coney Island Golf Course; (two photos) open area where the course was staged; plat drawing of Coney Island in its earlier days (provided by Carver County Historical Society); nearby Island View Golf Club; (last photo) it seemed to me no road trip to the island would be complete without a visit to Waconia’s Dairy Queen, and a quick lunch featuring, yes, a coney.

CIRCLE ISLAND

Left to right, top to bottom: Old publicity flier, presumably issued close to the course’s 1924 opening; closer look includes residential plot numbers plus, in the open area, designations of tee and green locations on the golf course; another publicity flier; 1926 ad; 1938 aerial photo, via Borchert Map Library; one modern day view – this turtle was basking in the autumn sun near the eastern shore of Circle Lake. Seems it would have stood little chance of securing a tee time after a swim to the island, because, well, you know, turtles would have been notorious for — don’t wait for it — slow play.

Flier images courtesy of Rice County Historical Society. Modern-day photos by Joe Bissen.

Lost courses, or just my imagination?

Ben Hogan, asked about his indefatigable search to hone the perfect golf swing, famously replied, “I dug it out of the dirt.”

Props to you, Ben. We can dig it, though certainly not to your level (four U.S. Opens, two PGAs, two Masters, one British Open). Matter of fact, for most of us pedestrian double-digit sloggers, the concept of digging it out of the dirt generally has to do with stubbing an L-wedge two inches behind the intended point of impact and propelling the ball four feet forward.

Carrying the concept over to Minnesota’s lost golf courses, digging also produces mixed results. For instance, I searched, often exhaustively, over years even, and still sometimes came up with no answers to this existential question: Was there a golf course there or not?

With 233 Minnesota lost courses now identified, I’m turning to a group of maybes. That is, maybe there was a golf course there, maybe there wasn’t. In many cases, I’d bet there was, but I could just never confirm it.

I know there are people who know about some of these places. I’d love to be hear from them.

Digging in:

St. Louis Park: It’s been close to 10 years since an e-mailer wrote that a relative had told her of a golf course owned by Jean Pierre Butte (aka John Peter Hill, she wrote) on land “approximately located in St. Louis Park between Brunswick Avenue South to the west, Cedar Lake Road to the south, 16th Street West to the north, and beyond Zarthan Avenue South to the east.” The e-mailer offered no other details.

A decade later, I remain puzzled.

I believe that land would now be in the vicinity of Park Place Plaza, where there is a Home Depot and a Costco, or possibly a block or three west of that. I searched newspaper archives and a smattering of old St. Louis Park and Minneapolis city directories and came up with no evidence of such a course.

The aerial photo below shows this area in 1937. After that date and to the present, there is much more residential and apparently commercial development. The road at the top is what is now I-394; the road at the bottom that crests to the north is Cedar Lake Road. When I look for lost golf courses in aerial maps, there are two telltale signs: clear patterns of fairways, and small white dots that indicate sand greens. I see a couple of such dots in this photo — not the  larger, horizontal ovals near the top — but I doubt they were golf-course greens.

From University of Minnesota’s John Borchert Map Library

Big Lake: From a note copied from a newspaper issue of July 31, 1924 — I failed to mark the exact source but I suspect it was the Sherburne County Star News — I have this:

“Engineer FW Nickerson this week has completed a plat of the Thomas farm on the west shore of Lake Mitchell at Big Lake. … The plat includes some nice lake shore lots and a proposed golf course back from the lake. The course will extend back across the Elk River, which should make it more attractive.”

An aerial photo from 1938 shows no signs of a golf course.

Duluth: A couple of years ago, a man in the east Metro told me about a course that used to be where the Miller Hill Mall is now. I spent almost 16 years in Duluth one winter’s day no that’s a joke starting in 1981 and never heard of such a place, but the man lived in Duluth, knew his golf, and I bet he was right. (I’m almost certain he wasn’t referring to the lost Maple Grove Golf Acres course just up the road in Hermantown.)

Hollandale: A story in the Albert Lea Tribune of May 2, 1931, which went into detail about the establishment of the long-lost Recreation Course in that city (“Albert Lea, Part II: A little recreation, a little history”) also mentioned plans for a course to be built that summer at Hollandale, 11 miles to the northeast of Albert Lea. No other details were offered, and I never found evidence the course was built.

Lake Wilson: Also stumbled across a reference to this Murray County city and an impending establishment of a golf course in the April 27, 1930, Minneapolis Star Tribune:

“Dr. Stanley S. Chunn has been elected president of the newly organized Lake Wilson Golf club, and G. A. Swenson will serve as the first secretary. A number of sites for the course are under consideration and selection will be made soon.”

That sent me to archives of the Lake Wilson Pilot. Seventeen days earlier, the Pilot reported that an organizational meeting for a golf and possibly tennis club would be held. And on April 17, a Pilot story was headlined, “Lake Wilson Again Will Have Golf Links.” (The “Again” in the headline is intriguing — did Lake Wilson have a course before 1930?)

The latter story said a $5 membership fee had been established, and that “a number of sites” were being considered for the golf course. But I never found evidence that a course ever was built.

Janesville: As it relates to the headline in this post, Janesville apparently falls under “just my imagination.”

A July 3, 1927, story about a tournament for the Southern Minnesota Golf Association mentioned this city as a member club. Janesville was not listed as an association member in stories I found from 1926 and 1932. The city’s current course, Prairie Ridge, is near the northwestern corner of town, and was established in 1995, according to Internet entries.

An aerial photo from 1938 shows land just to the west east of the city limits and I believe bordering what is now Old Highway 14 to the south, with patterns that conspicuously look like hole routings on a golf course. See below, courtesy of the Borchert Map Library.

These patterns had blended into the surrounding area in aerials from 1951, suggesting the course had closed by then.

Someone in Janesville surely knows about this. I don’t know anyone in Janesville. But the Waseca County Historical Society was kind enough to have searched newspaper archives and talked to a few of the locals, and nobody knew about a Janesville course predating Prairie Ridge.

So, no lost golf course at Janesville. Somebody prove me wrong. Please.

Battle Lake: I thought I had a bead on this area seven or eight years ago. Now the bead has been turned into a blob — a faded blob in my memory banks.

Someone told me of cross country ski trails that wound through part of Glendalough State Park, just northwest of Battle Lake. I looked at historic aerial photos and at one time thought I spotted a surefire golf course routing, maybe on the south shore of Lake Blanche, but now I’m not finding it.

Also, the Minneapolis Tribune ran a classified ad on June 3, 1973, advertising a “proposed golf course” at a Chippewa Island resort on East Battle Lake. Have to say I’m clueless on that as well.

Update, 2024: A Glendalough Park employee has told me that previous owners of the land plotted two or three holes onto the site. Hence, not a lost golf course. Got to have at least five holes for me to consider it a golf course.

Dawson: The Dawson Golf Club website and other Internet entries place 1928 as the year the course was established in the small Lac qui Parle County city. I know of two newspaper references to Dawson Golf Club having played in competitions against other clubs in the area, in 1922 and ’23. Perhaps a lost course in town before the current one came along? I have no idea, but it wouldn’t be even remotely unheard of.

Montevideo: Two golf courses in this western Minnesota city at one point? I’m not sure. GolfLink, a website that posts generally reliable info on courses’ years of establishment, says River Crest in Montevideo (formerly The Crossings, presumably a different name even before that) was established in 1923. Got it so far. The plot thickens, though, when I see a Minneapolis Star story from June 14, 1932, that mentions a Minnesota Valley Golf Association tournament to be played at Montevideo Golf club. Among clubs participating would be “… Monte-Sota Golf club of Montevideo and the Montevideo Golf club.”

In May 1930, a Minneapolis Sunday Tribune story mentioned the same two golf clubs — same city, different clubs. And a Monte-Sota Golf Club of Montevideo was incorporated on May 10, 1930, according to papers presumably held by the Minnesota Secretary of State.

I see only four Monte-Sota references, none dating past 1934.

I can’t account for what to me looks like two golf clubs (albeit maybe not courses) in the same city.

Belle Plaine: “Tri-City Golf Club Planned,” read a small headline on a one-paragraph story in the Tribune of March 31, 1929. “Plans are under way here for the organization of the Tri-City Golf club, membership of which will be drawn from Belle Plaine, Jordan and New Prague,” read the item.

I poked around aerial photos of the Belle Plaine area from the 1930s and saw no golf course.

Clearbrook: I never found confirmation of a golf course in this city 30 miles northwest of Bemidji, but I found newspaper clips from 1930 and 1933 saying a Clearbrook club would play at a Red River tournament at Crookston, and mentions of Wayne Randall and Hardine Anderson of Clearbrook playing in area tournaments.

There are at least a dozen other places not mentioned here in which I found hints of courses abandoned or planned that aren’t listed on my map or mentioned in my writings. Off the top, I can think of Adrian, Aitkin (15 miles west of town, an old golf guide said) and Gilbert (not the Eveleth or Eshquaguma courses, as far as I could tell). At this point, I’m just about prepared to leave it at that, unless someone reading this or other postings can (please?) tell me more.

Cheers.

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

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.

Westwood Hills: Time travel, with photos

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

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.