Tag Archives: Minnesota golf

Everett Point, Tower: The rabbit hole turns north

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

That’s a heck of a rabbit hole.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Further burrowing into the rabbit hole required. …

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Now available: “More! Gone.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

More! Gone. is available here.

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

Order Fore! Gone. here.

Cities with courses in “More! Gone.”:

Ada

Albert Lea

Cass Lake

Cold Spring

Deephaven

Donehower / Dakota

Fergus Falls

Foley

Foreston

Hastings

Hinckley

Lakeville

Luverne

Madelia

Marshall

Milaca

Minneapolis

Oakdale

Pokegama Township, Pine County

Pine City

Princeton

Red Lake Falls

Richmond

Rochester

Rush City

St. Augusta

St. Cloud

St. Joseph

St. Paul

Sauk Rapids

Shorewood

Twin Valley

Winona

And one outlier.

 

St. Paul Mysteries, Part I: There was a golf course named Lakeview?

Presenting a Minnesota golf mystery. See if you can figure this out faster than I did. Only took me two years.

Spoiler alert: I’ll be giving away the answer a few paragraphs hence. I guess that’ll take the “mystery” out of play, but whatever.

—————-

Check out, from the Minnesota Golf Association’s archived membership rolls, this list of “St. Paul” golf clubs from 1921:

From Minnesota Golf Association  archives.

Refrain from geographical nitpicking, please, and scroll down to the final entry. (I’ll do the nitpicking — Midland Hills is in Roseville, White Bear Yacht Club is in Dellwood, Northwood was in North St. Paul, Somerset is in Mendota Heights. Something tells me the MGA didn’t feel the need to be geographically precise in those days, and that’s fine.)

OK, final entry in the photo:

Lake View Golf & Country Club (ditto marks indicating St. Paul).

Lake View Golf & Country Club? In St. Paul?

Never heard of it. What lake, what view, what golf, what country club? It was a mystery to me when in 2017 I was offered a look at the MGA archives and noticed the entry.

Care to take a stab at it?

There aren’t that many lakeside areas in or very near St. Paul, so some possibilities are easily eliminated. Lake View couldn’t have been tied to Phalen Park; that club was established in 1917 and is listed in the MGA membership roll pictured above. Lake View wasn’t tied to Como; that golf club’s course opened in 1930.

So … Lake View?

With other priorities in play, I set Lake View on the back burner for a year and change, though it would occasionally resurface to vex me. But I never could think of a golf course, extant or extinct, in St. Paul or within a few miles of it, that could have been called Lake View.

Twitter lent an unwitting hand in solving the mystery.

This February, while having a Twitter exchange with a golf historian on an unrelated issue, he tweeted to me this photo, taken from a page in the 1922 American Annual Golf Guide:

This was presumably the same club as Lake View in the MGA membership roll. Lake View (or Lakeview) Golf & Country Club, found!

Well, sort of. Except there really was no where there in the golf-guide entry. With my curiosity again piqued, I was off to the Minnesota History Center in search of Lakeview Golf & Country Club’s still-mysterious location. I struck gold (my gold standard is a low one) on one of the first microfiched sports sections I spooled up.

From the St. Paul Sunday Pioneer Press of May 1, 1921,  this (click on the image for a larger view):

“NEW GOLF COURSE WILL OPEN TODAY,” read the headline on the left side of the page.

“The Lakeview Golf & Country Club will entertain golfers of St. Paul today,” the story began. “… The Lakeview Club was organized by enthusiasts of the great Scottish pastime, who for the past two or three years have played on the Phalen municipal course. When the course became overcrowded , certain of its patrons decided to organize the Lakeview Club.

“An excellent strip of land in the northeast end of the city was purchased this spring and work on the first nine holes was started immediately. It is expected that before the close of the playing season that the limit of 200 members will have been …” (paragraph cuts off)

The rest of the article describes the course’s rolling terrain, elevated vantage points and various holes. Accompanying the story was a five-column map of the grounds and the routing. At the perimeters of the map are the giveaways. The course was bordered by Larpenteur Avenue on the north and Winthrop and East avenues on the west and east, respectively (East Avenue is now McKnight).

St. Paulites and many Minnesota golfers will recognize the description. Lakeview Golf & Country Club was what came to be known as Hillcrest.

More written history follows, but if you were familiar with Hillcrest Golf Club, you won’t want to miss the photo/map near the end of this post.


The history of Hillcrest Golf Club is mostly well-documented. It was best known as the east metro’s Jewish golf club for more than a half-century, although those Jewish roots were first established at nearby Northwood Country Club in North St. Paul, which opened in 1915. Northwood was abandoned in the 1940s, and some of its Jewish members soon purchased Hillcrest, which was a public course at the time. Hillcrest was sold to a local pipefitters union in 2011 and abandoned in 2017. Its grounds are now vacant.

But the genesis of Hillcrest — or Lakeview, at the start — is less well known. There are no club documents from its earliest years, I’ve been told, and the only mentions of the club before it was launched that I know of are the aforementioned 1921 reference to Phalen golfers seeking a valve for overcrowding and a reference in a Minneapolis Tribune story from the same year suggesting the new Lakeview club was private. But it isn’t impossible to cobble together a short history of Hillcrest-when-it-was-Lakeview.

The Pioneer Press of April 24, 1921, touted the impending start of the golf season. The headline: “St. Paul to Have Two New Golf Clubs Equaling Best in the West.” The first of these was University Golf Club, which soon would be renamed Midland Hills and, through the talents of noted golf architect Seth Raynor (identified as “Rayner” and “Raymore” in the Pioneer Press story), would indeed become a regionally prominent golf club.

The second club mentioned was Lakeview, and though as Hillcrest it also would become a golf course of distinction, it is unlikely, considering its staggering pace-of-construction timeline, that it began as one.

“Lakeview golfers believe they have set a record in course construction,” a note at the end of the April 14 story reads. “On April 6 work was started on the first ten holes of their new course in Hayden Heights, and on April 10, players used the course for the first time. The record seems a remarkable one. The remaining eight holes will be constructed soon.”

I never did track down under whose breakneck-paced guidance the routing, tree-stump pulling, grading, fairway canting, bunkering and greens swaling of Lakeview was first engineered (yes, that’s gentle sarcasm). However, those who have played Hillcrest will note that the routing shown in the 1921 Pioneer Press map is different from what they played, and it apparently took only months for the membership to ponder a redesign of Five-Day Lakeview.

“Lakeview club golfers are planning to make an 18-hole course of their links,” read the opening of a story in the July 31, 1921, Pioneer Press. “… Tom Vardon, White Bear professional, will be in charge of operations which will get under way at the earliest possible moment.”

Vardon, who was the head professional at White Bear Yacht Club and designer of more than 40 Upper Midwest courses, is cited in almost all credible references as the original designer of Hillcrest Golf Club. It would be needless nitpicking to challenge that, so I won’t. “Mr. Vardon was impressed with the turf covering the tract and declared that it is of a variety that takes years to develop,” the Pioneer Press story continued. “The second nine holes will be constructed on land that has been under cultivation for years and must be plowed and seeded.”

The bulk of the Vardon re-routing of Lakeview lasted for decades, albeit with revisions under the direction of A.W. Tillinghast in 1936-37. The club’s name didn’t last nearly as long.

The Pioneer Press referred to the club as Lakeview for the rest of 1921 and in tournaments in April and May of 1922. On May 14, 1922, the newspaper reported that the clubhouse would be moved closer to Larpenteur Avenue at the club’s northern edge.

More references to Lakeview are found in July and August of 1922 and early April 1923. But on April 22, 1923, a Pioneer Press story mentioned a new watering system that had been installed at “Hillcrest,” and from that point, the club was listed as Hillcrest whenever I found a printed mention. I found no information on reasons behind the name change.

Which brings up a point I and others wondered about: What lake gave Lakeview its name?

The reference most likely was to Beaver Lake, one mile south of the midpoint of the Lakeview/Hillcrest grounds. However, none of the Hillcrest-connected folks I talked with said Hillcrest offered a view of Beaver Lake, though most conceded that there might have been such a view in the course’s less-densely wooded 1920s. On the other hand, a mid-1920s St. Paul fire insurance map designates the Beaver Lake area as “slough” with only a small body of water, and a 1923 aerial photo supports that designation. A 1945 aerial photo shows another body of water just off the southeast corner of the Lakeview/Hillcrest grounds, in what is now Maplewood (it is largely marshland now), but that appeared to be more pond-sized than lake-sized.

Beaver Lake, Maplewood

—————-

St. Paul resident Ross Walkowiak, who is well-versed in Minnesota golf history and far more adept technologically than I am, put together a graphic piece that should be of interest to anyone who was familiar with the routing of Hillcrest Golf Club. It shows an aerial photo of Hillcrest at the time of its closing in 2017, superimposed in red with the routing of Lakeview/Hillcrest’s original nine holes in 1921 plus the original proposed routing of a second nine. For reference, Larpenteur Avenue is the street at the top of the photo.

Courtesy of Ross Walkowiak

Below is a 1923 aerial photo of the Lakeview/Hillcrest and part of the Hayden Heights areas of St. Paul. The golf course is at the far right side of the photo, basically from top to bottom. There is a diagonal street at the top-left of the photo. I believe this was Furness Avenue, now Furness Trail/Furness Parkway, which was the streetcar line referenced in the American Annual Golf Guide entry and which would have provided transportation to and from the golf course. The streetcar line ran as far northeast as White Bear Lake and Mahtomedi, connecting with the famed Wildwood Amusement Park.

Below is a 1945 aerial photo of the Hillcrest Golf Club area. This photo and the previous one are courtesy of the University of Minnesota’s John Borchert Map Library.

Other Lakeview/Hillcrest notes:

— Carl Lindgren was the first professional at Lakeview. Lindgren was most notably known as a longtime pro at Visalia, Calif., and also had positions in Detroit Lakes, Minn., and Mandan, N.D., where he died at age 61 in 1956.

— In late 2017, as Hillcrest was closing down, I invited readers to share their memories of the club. I’m inviting them again, either via this story or via the link in this paragraph.

Natalie Klasinski tees off on the 18th hole at Hillcrest Golf Club in 2017. (Valerie Reichel photo)

Soon-to-be-published post: An intriguing Hillcrest-area report that never came to fruition.

Thanks to those who contributed information and even speculation on early Lakeview/Hillcrest, including Ross Walkowiak, Dan Kelly, Rick Shefchik, Doug Mangine, John Hamburger and Mike Manthey. 

Hutchinson Golf Club and its closest of relatives

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.