All posts by Joe Bissen

About Joe Bissen

Joe Bissen is a Caledonia, Minnesota, native and former golf letter-winner at Winona State University. He is a retired sports copy editor at the Minneapolis Star Tribune and St. Paul Pioneer Press and former sports editor of the Duluth News-Tribune. His writing has appeared in Minnesota Golfer and Mpls.St.Paul magazines. He lives in South St. Paul, MN. Joe's award-winning first book, "Fore! Gone. Minnesota's Lost Golf Courses 1897-1999," was released in December 2013, and a follow-up, "More! Gone. Minnesota's Lost Golf Courses, Part II" was released in July 2020. The books are most readily available online at Amazon.com or Barnes & Noble (bn.com). He continues to write about lost courses on this website and has uncovered more than 245 of them.

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.

Now available: “More! Gone.”

Golf history, Lost golf courses,

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

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

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

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

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

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

More! Gone. is available here.

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

Order Fore! Gone. here.

Cities with courses in “More! Gone.”:

Ada

Albert Lea

Cass Lake

Cold Spring

Deephaven

Donehower / Dakota

Fergus Falls

Foley

Foreston

Hastings

Hinckley

Lakeville

Luverne

Madelia

Marshall

Milaca

Minneapolis

Oakdale

Pokegama Township, Pine County

Pine City

Princeton

Red Lake Falls

Richmond

Rochester

Rush City

St. Augusta

St. Cloud

St. Joseph

St. Paul

Sauk Rapids

Shorewood

Twin Valley

Winona

And one outlier.

 

Lake City Golf Club: On grounds south and north

Lost golf courses,

In “Fore! Gone,” I included a brief entry on a presumed lost golf course in Lake City. A fellow who preferred to be left unnamed (strange phrase, as I think about it. If you already have a name, how can you go unnamed?) told me of a course that opened in 1927 on the south side of Lake City, on or near the National Guard grounds known as Camp Lakeview.

When the Guard came to Lake City to train for six weeks each summer, the fellow told me, “They couldn’t hardly golf there.”

Well, I have visual confirmation of the lost course.

The images are of a postcard I recently purchased. The postcard is dated April 4, 1930, on the back, and the inscription on the front reads, “Birds eye view of Lake City Minn. on Lake Pepin National Guard Camp and golf links on left. Arrow indicates location of tourist camp.”

I have driven past or near this spot a hundred times and had no idea there was a famed landmark (OK, famed only from my twisted point of view) there. A work colleague from the Lake City area confirms that this view would have been looking northwest, about two miles from downtown. I haven’t researched closely or come up with any details about this course, best guess is that it was named Lake City Golf Club, but it appears to me it would have been situated on what I see on Google Maps as Younger Coulee.

The inscription on the back of the card is notable to some lost-course degree. It concludes with this sentence: “New Golf course is one mile N. W. of city.”

That is presumably a reference to what is currently named Lake City Golf, situated just west of U.S. 61 northwest of town.

I have questions about the timeline involved with these two golf courses. I’m not going to definitively sort them out here because I have a hundred other things going on, including the two most vexing projects known to man: preparing tax returns and ridding a household of infernal mice.

Anyway, about the timeline:

— The man I interviewed in 2013 said the “National Guard” golf course was established in 1927.

— Most Internet entries state 1928 as the date of establishment for Lake City Golf Club.

— The postcard, as noted, mentions the establishment of a new course with a projected date of 1930.

— Newspapers generally offer more reliable details. The Winona Daily News frequently referenced Lake City Golf Club in the 1920s. One story said the course lay on the “parade grounds” of the National Guard camp. Another, from June 1924, states the club was in its second season.

— A March 1929 Minneapolis Tribune story says “Lake City’s new golf course will be formally opened around June 1.”

My best guesses are that Lake City Golf Club on the National Guard grounds was established in 1923 and moved to its site on the northwest side of the city in 1929.

I’ll leave it at that but welcome any comments offering details about the course, either site, and years.

Author’s note: New entries on this site have admittedly been sparse in recent months. Best excuse I can offer is that I’m working on a second book about Minnesota’s lost golf courses and plan to have it published sometime this year. Thanks for your interest.

 

Hollydale (Plymouth) to close; Willow Creek (Rochester) likely to close

Lost golf courses,

Feb. 1: Please note, I am leaving this original post from Oct. 26 intact. There is a significant update at the end of the post.

The past two weeks have brought news of one more Minnesota golf course that will close at the end of the 2019 golf season and another that is likely to close.

The former is Hollydale Golf Course of Plymouth; the latter is Willow Creek of Rochester. Both are public layouts.

Below are links to a Hollydale notice and a Willow Creek news story:

Hollydale notice.

Willow Creek closing.

The Willow Creek story leaves open the sliver of a possibility that another buyer will come along and keep the course open. If that does not happen, it will bring to 73 the number of Minnesota golf courses that have closed since the year 2000.

Here is the current list:

Minnesota’s lost golf courses, since 2000: The list of 85

Photo by Peter Wong.

Unrelated: In the coming months, I will be republishing a slightly revised, slightly updated edition of “Fore! Gone.” It will be in print-on-demand form. The book has proved to be especially popular as a gift for older golfers. Will let you know about it soon.

Update, Feb. 1: Willow Creek will remain open. New buyers have secured a three-year lease. Here is a link to the Rochester Post Bulletin story:

https://www.postbulletin.com/news/local/willow-creek-to-re-open-as-golf-course-this-spring/article_7b980ab4-443e-11ea-bdcf-e332ff9910d6.html