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:
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.
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.
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:
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.
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:
The original Cass Lake Golf Club served golfers for about than a decade and a half in the 1920s and 1930s, not a bad run during an era in which scores of other small-town courses in Minnesota closed up shop.
At some point, however, the original CLGC situated partly on the Bingham Lodge land between downtown and the shore of Cass Lake ceased to exist, and the game was re-established a mile and a half to the southwest, on the other side of the city, on the site of what is now Sandtrap Golf Course.
But when?
At least two websites say Sandtrap (not its name in the course’s early years) was established in 1944. At least seven others say 1943. One, admittedly more business-oriented than golf-oriented, says 1983.
Not quite, not quite, and what weed from yonder gorse patch are you smoking?
Here is an aerial photo, dated 1939 and taken from the Minnesota DNR’s Landview service:
Yep, it’s a golf course. Modern-day Cass Lake golfers might recognize the lay of the land. It is Sandtrap Golf Course — or at least the 80-year-old version of it — a mile east of downtown. Except the photo dates to 1939, before the consensus purported opening of the course.
Here is what I came up with regarding the very earliest years of what is now Sandtrap Golf Course:
I don’t know whether the original Cass Lake Golf Club, on the Bingham site, flourished or floundered in the 1930s. I came across a few references indicating the course operated into the late 1930s, including a 1937 newspaper ad that said The Bingham still had a golf course adjoining it.
A headline in the Cass Lake Times of July 6, 1939, however, suggested that organized golf in Cass Lake went through a short period of dormancy in the late 1930s. And it pointed toward the future of golf in town.
“Golf Is Revived On New Course,” read the headline.
“The new Cass Lake Golf Course,” the story began, “is now ready for play. Fairways have been cleaned and rolled and sand greens and driving tees are in excellent shape. The new links are located on an eighty-seven acre tract south of the GN wye (railroad intersection, seen at the top of the aerial photo) and overlooking beautiful Partridge Lake.
“Thirty townspeople hold membership in the reorganized golf club.
“The Cass Lake links were first located north of the grade school and across the Soo tracks. Unable to make suitable arrangements with the Dougherty interests for the greater part of the old course that they had been renting, the Club traded ten acres with the bank for the tract near the wye. The bank then sold the ten acres to the School District who will develop a field for various athletic activities. Thirty-six years ago this same field was one of the finest baseball diamonds in the lake region and had a grandstand that held a thousand. It was torn down in about 1913. Adjoining the school yard it make(s an) excellent school athletic field.”
That golf was played at the Sandtrap site earlier than the most-often-cited date of 1943 might be mere historical nitpicking, and Cass Lake is not by any stretch the only Minnesota golf course whose origins go back further than generally credited. The same occurred, for instance, in Marshall and Little Falls and certainly dozens of other Minnesota cities. I’m certain my research and writing isn’t foolproof, either, and that among the hundred-plus lost golf courses I’ve written about, I have gotten dates and history wrong. It’s an imperfect pursuit. Regardless, it seems reasonable to note discrepancies when they lead to a fuller, more accurate history.
The new Cass Lake Golf Club appears to have not roared into the 1940s. A 1940 Cass Lake Times ad mentioned greens fees were 50 cents and that Nick Schluter was club president. A 1941 story notes the same club president, but I found no direct mention of the golf course in operation from that year’s Times editions.
In 1942, golfers from nearby Walker were invited to play at Cass Lake, and vice versa. In May 1943, a headline read, “Cass Lake Golfers Playing Every Day Now,” and “Russell Johnson is putting the links in shape.”
By 1944, hard times were evident. “Town Needs A Golf Course,” blared a front-page Times headline on April 13. A drive for at least 60 members was being conducted by the club’s officers. President N.A. Schluter was quoted as saying, “It is imperative that the town and resort country adjacent, get behind the membership drive, to assure not only a golf course, but one of the best in the country.”
Newspaper stories from later in 1944 confirm that the course did operate that season, but I found no stories mentioning Cass Lake Golf Club in the 1945 editions of the Times.
In 1946, stockholders met early in the season, with Schluter still president. A membership fee of $10 was set, but the status of the course was uncertain. In May 1946, the clubhouse was seriously vandalized. The only other mention of golf in Cass Lake from 1946 was a reference to golfers from town playing in the Birchmont tournament in nearby Bemidji.
In March 1947 came a headline that read “What of Golf?” implying that the club was either dormant or barely alive. Rescue came later that month, with the May 22 Times reporting that the local VFW chapter had taken over management of the course, now called Cass Lake Golf Links. Rollie Schmidt and Cedric Schluter were apparently heading efforts to keep the club operating, and a mixed tournament was set for that June.
I didn’t investigate beyond that date, A) assuming that the golf course survived from that point onward, the start of a five-decade period of stability for Minnesota golf, and B) having set the Hubbs Microfilm Room at the Minnesota History Center record for spooling up rolls of film on a northern Minnesota city. (Yes, that’s sarcasm.) I do know that the course, on the 1939 site, operates today as Sandtrap Golf Course, owned and managed by Gary Larson, who in a brief conversation with me said the course was doing well, thank you.
The Schluters and other Cass Lake Golf Club predecessors would no doubt thank him for keeping the game alive there.
Below: Just FYI, an aerial photo of the golf course from 1976, courtesy of the University of Minnesota’s John Borchert Map Library. Without digging into the more recent history of the course, I can say with 98 percent certainty that it featured sand greens (the bright, white spots) at this time.
Please comment if you have more to add about golf in Cass Lake. Cheers.
The story of golf in the northern Minnesota city of Cass Lake does not start with an attempt to lure the U.S. president to town.
But a story has to start somewhere, so here we go …
On March 11, 1927, Henry George Bingham of St. Paul composed a letter, typewritten on paper carrying the letterhead of the St. Paul office of the Mutual Benefit Life Insurance Company, to M.N. Koll, secretary of the Cass Lake Commercial Club. Bingham, who owned a resort lodge on the western shore of Cass Lake, informed Koll that he had heard President Calvin Coolidge had been invited to spend his summer vacation in northern Minnesota — at the Woodhome Lodge, an hour southeast of Cass Lake on Roosevelt Lake near the city of Outing.
Bingham thought Cass Lake — and The Bingham, as his lodge was known — would be a superior presidential destination. He told Koll so in his letter and implored him to write to Coolidge, inviting him to Cass Lake for the summer.
The next day, Koll composed a letter that would soon be eastbound. Today, a copy of it rests in the archives of the Minnesota History Center. The letter began:
“Subject — Summer White House.
“My dear President:
“The late Edmund L. Pennington, had a summer home here for several years. He was the Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Minneapolis Saint Paul and Sault Ste. Marie Railway when he died about a year ago. It was sold to Mr. H.G. Bingham shortly afterwards by Mr. Pennington’s Estate.
“It is modern. It has very choice equipment. It is half a mile from the village limits. Has telephone, electric lights, $5,000.00 cabin launch suitable for the waters of the lake system here. Has an east frontage, fine bathing beach, stands on a bluff overlooking the lake facing the famous Star Island. Has equipment to care for over thirty guests. Has both separate lodges and sleeping rooms in the main building. Has a golf links adjacent. It is quiet. It is situated among the pines.”
Koll listed more Cass Lake organizations and assets, including the Consolidated Chippewa Indian Agency, and proclaimed that “we can lay claim to a high average of intellectuality in the community.” The sum total of the letter was to invite Coolidge to spend part of his summer at The Bingham.
Off the letter went to Washington, D.C.
Koll received acknowledgement of the letter’s arrival in correspondence dated March 15 and written on White House stationery. The White House’s reply was noncommittal.
But ultimately, no dice. On May 31, the White House formally announced, to great fanfare from Midwestern newspapers of the day, that Coolidge and his travel contingent — including his wife, Grace, and her pet porcupine, Betty — would spend their summer at Custer State Park in the Black Hills of South Dakota.
Cass Lake’s loss, Black Hills’ gain. Henry Bingham, Mathias N. Koll and Cass Lake Golf Club (Minnesota lost course No. 210) went on about their 1927 daily routines, sans the Coolidges and Betty.
In a sporting sense, perhaps it’s just as well. Silent Cal might not have enjoyed himself at Cass Lake Golf Club. “Coolidge played out of obligation and his game reflected it,” Golf Advisor reported in a 2014 story, “as he usually required double-digit shots on each hole.”
Advertisement, unknown newspaper, dated June 4, 1937.
CLUB ORIGINS
Cass Lake Golf Club’s nine-hole, sand-greens course had not yet begun its second season when Bingham and Koll composed their letters. The club was organized in 1925 and opened play on and near Bingham’s property in 1926.
“It has long been the desire of the people of Cass Lake Village,” read a Cass Lake Times article in July 1925, “to add to its many other attractions — golf grounds.”
A committee of 10 businessmen was formed to search for such grounds. A.C. Anderson of Hibbing, Minn., described as “a golf expert,” was invited to visit Cass Lake and offer opinions on a suitable tract. The decision was made by the newly formed Cass Lake Amusements Inc. to employ land on the “Sam Fairbanks Allotment,” as the Times put it, “or that part of this allotment that lies between the ‘Boat Landing Road’ the Soo Line railway and Cass Lake.”
“This is a beautiful round, rolling, covered with a vigorous second growth of timber, and having a splendid outlook upon Cass Lake, the several islands, the Minnesota National Forest and practically all of Pike Bay.”
Eat your heart out, Cal. And Betty.
Cass Lake Golf Club’s prehistory began with four holes that lay on the Bingham Lodge property before the club was organized. After the club organized on June 28, 1926, five more holes were built after the acquisition of adjacent land on what the Times referred to as “the Newsome property.”
If all of this is leading to the notion that Henry Bingham was the father of golf in Cass Lake, I’ll just say I don’t think that’s true.
I never found a connection between Bingham and the game of golf. But his predecessor on the lodge property, Pennington, well, that’s a different story.
Edmund Pennington was born in 1848 to an English father and Scottish mother. He rose through the railway ranks to become Soo Line president. In 1910, Pennington County in northwestern Minnesota was named for him. Pennington lived in Minneapolis’ prestigious Lowry Hill neighborhood, and his name is linked in published biographies with names such as Pillsbury and Bovey, both residents of Wayzata’s well-to-do Ferndale neighborhood. (Charles Bovey was a founder of Woodhill Country Club in 1915, and much of the entire Ferndale populace was connected to golf.)
Two other nuggets further connect Pennington to golf: The executor of his estate after his death in 1926 was one Clive T. Jaffray of Minneapolis, a founder of that city’s Minikahda Club and a frequent champion in the early years of Minnesota golf; and a 1923 biography of Pennington lists him as a member of both Minikahda and Duluth’s Northland Country Club.
I would bet a stringer of plump Cass Lake walleye that Pennington built four golf holes on his northern Minnesota estate before dying, after which Bingham became the land owner.
Summertime entries in the Cass Lake Times of 1926 tell of Cass Lake Golf Club’s preparations in building a course. On Sept. 2, 1926, the newspaper reported, “The first casualty on the Cass Lake Golf Links occurred last week, while Mr. and Mrs. C.W. Hough were playing. Mrs. Hough swung on the ball, (Cyril says it was the prettiest shot she has made this year) and Cyril admiring the shot didn’t move fast enough and the ball hit him in the eye, laying his cheek open.”
LOCATION … LOCATION?
If “close” counts only in horseshoes, hand grenades and finding lost golf courses, then I suppose I can take credit, because I can come close to pinpointing the site of the long-abandoned Cass Lake Golf Club.
But I can’t do better than that. If you want me to tell me exactly where the first tee was, or whether it was a long walk from the ninth green back to the clubhouse, not gonna happen.
The following is, I guess, equal parts facts and guesses, likelihoods and unlikelihoods, about Cass Lake Golf Club’s site:
— The Cass Lake Times story from 1925 identified the site as between the “Boat Landing Road,” the Soo Line railway and the city proper. That would be the northeastern part of town, possibly within the current city limits and possibly just outside.
— The Bingham is now Cass Lake Lodge, according to Cass County Museum records. But the boundaries of Bingham’s property — inside of which the four holes of his golf course were placed — are unknown. Best guess is that they were east west or more likely south of his lakeside lodge.
Unfortunately, old aerial photos are of no help. The University of Minnesota’s 1937 database has a gap in Cass County — Murphy’s Law at play here — just at the western edge of Cass Lake and does not show the land between the city and the lake, where the golf course was. Also, available historical plat maps do not directly identify owners of lots in the vicinity.
— Another 1925 story identified the golf course land as being north of the Soo Line railway and east of Boatlanding road. Efforts to identify this road resulted in possible conflicts. I received much-appreciated input from Cass Lake residents and former residents on a Facebook page, mostly leading to the assertion that the current Sailstar Drive is the Boatlanding Road — but a 1927 map of resorts in the area (I can’t publish it because I don’t have rights to it) doesn’t show any roads leading diagonally from the city to the lake, as Sailstar does today. So I still can’t positively identify the path of Boatlanding Road from the 1920s.
— I have no idea where the aforementioned “Sam Fairbanks allotment” was. Nor did any of the handful of people I mentioned it to.
— I did find two newspaper clips that, put together, appear to closely identify the site of the golf course. First, the Cass Lake Times of July 1, 1926, reported on the organization of a golf club, with Walter Minton as its inaugural president.
“Dues were set at $15 and fifty members have already pledged themselves.
“The course consists of the Bingham four hole course, now ready and the Newsome property to be teed up for a nine hole course.
“The club will lease these to properties for the present and the links will be ready for use in a short while.”
But where was the “Newsome property”? I was stuck on that detail until recently discovering a classified ad in the Minneapolis Tribune of April 26, 1926, notifying that the Highland Inn Resort was up for sale and that the land was being held by the Newsome Development Company of Cass Lake.
Today, Highland Park Lodge is about 550 yards southeast of Cass Lake Lodge — formerly the Bingham. It leads me to say my best guess is that the original Cass Lake Golf Club land lay close to those lodges, about a quarter-mile west of the lake, possibly on or near what is now 162nd Street Northwest and 60th Avenue Northwest, or about four blocks north of the Leech Lake Land of Ojibwe Tribal Office. That could be in conflict with the noted proximity to Boatlanding Road, and I can’t resolve that.
UPDATE: COURSE FOUND, I’M PRETTY SURE
Update, July 19, 2019: I have come across a 1939 aerial photo of the area between the city of Cass Lake and the lake itself, which I presume includes the Bingham Lodge. The photo is likely from the season after golf was played at this site, but the features wouldn’t have changed appreciably. I can’t identify all areas with certainty, but I am pretty sure this photo reveals the Cass Lake Golf Club site.
Photo is courtesy of the University of Minnesota’s John Borchert Map Library. I tried to keep markings to a minimum, but here are some guidepoints: B = Bingham Lodge; CL = Cass Lake (the lake); BR = Boatlanding Road; CL-C = Cass Lake (the city). I marked a few points with a green G. If you’re able to take a close look (clicking on the photo might help), you might see very small white circles that look very much like sites of golf courses’ sand greens.
RUNNING ITS COURSE
Cass Lake Golf Club operated on this site into the 1930s. In 1933, memberships cost $15 and greens fees were 50 cents. The club had an organizational meeting in April 1938, the Cass Lake Times reported, and an inter-club match was played against Bemidji in May 1938.
In 1939, Cass Lake Golf Club went through a significant change. I’ll let you know about that in my next post. In 1945, Henry Bingham sold his lodge to fellow St. Paul resident Davidson Burns, who renamed it The Burns. Carl and Freda Bixenstine bought the resort in 1952 and operated it until 1969. It operates today under the name Cass Lake Lodge.
Henry George Bingham, who worked at the Curtis and St. Paul hotels after selling his lodge, died in 1948. Seems a safe bet that he never met Calvin Coolidge nor witnessed what surely was the considerable hitch in his golf swing.
Photo at top of post is of Bingham Lodge, via lakesnwoods.com. Caption reads, “The Bingham Resort, Cass Lake Minnesota, 1940’s.” Thanks to the Cass County Museum and the Facebook group Children of Cass Lake MN for contributions to this post.
