Golf in Cass Lake: President Coolidge, here’s what you missed

Lost golf courses, ,

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.

 

 

 

 

 

The Lake Park Golf Club: St. Paul short-timer

Lost golf courses,

Snelling Avenue. You’ve probably heard of it. Main north-south artery for transportation on the western side of St. Paul. Traffic to rival that of a Martha’s Cookies stand as it rolls past the Minnesota State Fairgrounds.

Como Avenue. You’ve probably heard of it, too. If not, then you’ve probably heard of Como the lake (not the enormous one in Italy) or Como the golf course or Como the zoo. Como the avenue meets Snelling just south of the Minnesota State Fairgrounds, in the northwestern quarter of Minnesota’s capital city.

Now, about that golf course at Snelling and Como …

… There wasn’t one. But there was one darn close to it, almost a hundred years ago. And there was, to be fair, a golf club even closer.

I’m betting you never heard of either one.

The following entry in the 1923 American Annual Golf Guide tells us of the golf course and for all intents and purposes tells us where it was — unless you want to be picky, a right I reserve for myself a couple of paragraphs from now.

The Lake Park Golf Club, relatively small in stature and and as far as I can tell rather unremarkable in every other way, long ago and for maybe as little as one golf season occupied a thin, rectangular plot of land not quite at Como and Snelling but within a solid midiron strike of it.

Lake Park is Minnesota lost golf course No. 206. (The other 200-plus I have identified can be seen on my Google lost course map.)

Information on The Lake Park Golf Club is sketchy, beyond the confirmation that it did in fact exist. That can be found in the April 2, 1922, edition of the St. Paul Pioneer Press, within a short story about local indoor golf clubs shutting down for the season in advance of the outdoor season. (Indoor golf clubs in downtown St. Paul and Minneapolis were common in the 1920s.) The story mentioned “Carl Lindgren, who again this season will be at the Lakeview Golf club and Sig Hanson who will teach the game at the newly organized Lake Park golf club.”

To expand and then briefly retreat, all indications are that The Lake Park Golf Club was an arm of something called the Lake Park Club. Though I did find one mention of a Lake Park Commercial Club as early as 1915, the Lake Park Club is not listed in St. Paul city directories until 1922. Those entries were preceded by a mention in the Pioneer Press of Sept. 10, 1921, that the city council had granted “a license regulating the Selling and Handling of Foodstuffs” to six parties, including “Lake Park Club, Snelling and Como Aves.”

But I would bet Tiger Woods’ $20 million yacht if he only would cede it to me that Snelling and Como isn’t exactly where the golf course was. At least not the Como part of it.

A 1916 St. Paul plat map, the closest to 1922 that is readily available, shows a 38-acre parcel owned by Archibald Emerson that is bordered by Snelling Avenue on the west, Northern Pacific railroad tracks on the south, Hamline Avenue on the east and Wynne Street on the north. (Como Avenue is two blocks north of Wynne.)

University of Minnesota John Borchert Map Library plat map

The following two aerial photos of that parcel from 1923 are eminently revealing.

Aerial photos from University of Minnesota’s John Borchert Map Library.

The top photo shows the larger area near Snelling and Como, with part of the State Fairgrounds at the upper-left corner and part of Como Park on the right side. Snelling runs north-south through the entire left side of the photo. Como runs east-west, just above the midpoint of the photo. The presumed area of The Lake Park Golf Club is near the bottom-right-center of the photo.

The lower photo represents, I guess one would say, my Eureka! moment. Just north of the railroad tracks and east of Snelling is an area that I am 99 percent certain reveals a golf course. You might have to trust me on this, because I have looked at hundreds of old aerial photos of golf courses, and this parcel clearly shows fairway routing. Wynne Street is at the northern border of the golf grounds, with Breda Avenue one block north of that and Como one block north of Breda. (Note that the parcel just across Snelling to the west could be mistaken as fairway routings, but it almost certainly was a railroad switchyard.)

Click on either photo for a closer look. The bottom photo is pretty much a dead giveaway that a golf course was there. Driving around that area today, my impression is that there would have been room for a nine-hole golf course, albeit probably a short one.

The Lake Park Golf Club — assuming it was a private club — did not carry nearly the stature of St. Paul’s other private golf clubs. It received only a fraction of the coverage that was afforded by the Pioneer Press to the likes of Town & Country, Somerset, White Bear Yacht Club and Lakeview (renamed Hillcrest in 1923). Even the Phalen Park public course was mentioned more often.

But there were occasional nuggets. On April 7, 1922, the Pioneer Press listed Lake Park as one of nine members of the just-formed St. Paul Golf Association. On June 25, 1922, the newspaper reported that a St. Paul caddie tournament had been held, with Lake Park represented by Louie Rustad and Theodore Tupa. (Research shows a Theodore Tupa who was a Summit Avenue resident and bandleader in 1949.)

On June 4, the Pioneer Press reported that an open house would be held at Lake Park that day. The club, the newspaper said, “has not yet closed on its memberships. The fairways and greens are in splendid condition and plans are now underway for the completion of the club house.”

Whether the course survived into the 1923 season, I don’t know. Sharon Shinomiya of the Como Park Bugle graciously passed along this nugget to me, a passage from the St. Paul Daily News of April 1, 1923, in a story headlined “St. Paul Golf Clubs Prepare to Start Season Soon.”

“Chelsea Heights is the only course that is in doubt about having an instructor, but as golf pros are not lacking, it is probable that Chelsea Heights will have one also. This is the new course that was opened last year at Como …”

The Chelsea Heights reference surely was to the Lake Park course, which was — depending on whose hairs you care to split regarding geographical designations — in the Chelsea Heights or Tilden area of St. Paul’s Como neighborhood.

I found no other direct references to The Lake Park Golf Club in 1923 or beyond. By 1924, Sig Hansen (I believe this is the proper spelling of his last name) had become the new professional at Phalen Park. By 1928, the Archibald Emerson plot on which Lake Park golfers had played had been bought by Duluth & Virginia Realty Company of Minnesota, though the plot had not been commercially or residentially developed. Today, the old golf course land is occupied by the campus of Hmong College Prep Academy and apartment complexes, principally Como Park Apartments.

Former site of The Lake Park Golf Club, taken from Jessamine Avenue West at the southern edge of the former golf course grounds. Como Park Apartments are prominent on these grounds.
Near the southwestern corner of the former Lake Park golf grounds, on what is currently the campus of Hmong College Prep Academy.

A few other notes on the Lake Park Club:

The 1922 St. Paul City Directory lists Lake Park Club as being headquartered at 1200 North Snelling — the intersection of Snelling and Como. Sam Y. Gordon was president and Earl P. Buglass was secretary (a Samuel Y. Gordon was Minnesota’s lieutenant governor from 1911-13). In a 1923-24 city directory, the club’s listed address was 1450 Breda Avenue (one block north of the golf grounds), with Samuel Skoog as secretary. A 1925-26 directory lists Buglass as secretary and the club at “Snelling Av ne cor (corner) Como Av.”

Subsequent references in city directories are titled “Lake Park Commercial Club,” based at 1208 North Snelling, and begin in 1926, with George Sweeney as secretary. Property cards at the Ramsey County Historical Society include frequent entries from 1926 through 1936, with notations such as confectionery, dance hall, 2 pool tables, roller skate rink, and “on sale.” The final entry, from Sept. 8, 1936, lists the property as “Roller Skating.”

Today, there is no longer a building standing at 1208 Snelling Avenue North.

 

St. Paul Mystery, I-A: The 2,000-member golf club that never was

Lost golf courses, ,

There is one curious sidebar to the early history of Lakeview-then-Hillcrest Golf Club. It concerns the notion that half of an entire neighborhood of St. Paul could have become golf course grounds.

Preposterous, right?

In the end, probably yes. But maybe, just maybe, not if Charles Gordon had had his way.

The year was 1921, the month December. It was shortly after — barring some all-time Month No. 12 heat wave that I don’t know about — Lakeview Golf & Country Club had concluded its first season of play on a thin, rectangular plot at the northeastern corner of St. Paul, in what is now known as the Hayden Heights neighborhood. (Lakeview would become known as Hillcrest in 1923. Photo at the top of this post shows Hillcrest, now a Minnesota lost golf course, at Larpenteur Avenue in April 2019.)

If a two-paragraph entry in the Dec. 30 Minneapolis Star is to be believed, someone had bigger plans for the neighborhood than a mere 18-holer.

“New Club for St. Paul,” read a sub-headline on a longer story.

“A new golf club is planned for St. Paul which probably will be one of the largest in the northwest,” the entry began. “The club will have over 2,000 members and will be a 36-hole course.

“C.W. Gordon of the Somerset club is one of the principal backers. The club will be for the salaried men and the annual dues will be $25. C. Raynor will be employed as architect. The course will be built on the tracts of land near the Lakeview Club.”

Well, knock me over with a featherie.

Where do I start?

A) I never heard of such a thing.

B) Two thousand members? (Yes, the story read 2,000, not some other number.) That is preposterous on its face, even knowing that in 1921 golf in Minnesota and the Twin Cities was entering a decade of tremendous growth.

C) Thirty-six holes, with 18 in the neighborhood having been dedicated just months before? Seems unlikely, and I’ll get to more of that.

D) Did someone say Raynor?

There is this, in defense of the Star story: C.W. Gordon was a man of considerable means, so the idea that he had grand plans should come as no surprise.

Charles William Gordon was president of Gordon & Ferguson, a St. Paul clothing manufacturer and wholesaler. His family lived at 378 Summit Avenue and was well connected in business and sporting circles, tied to The Minikahda Club, Town & Country Club and then the patrician Somerset Country Club in Mendota Heights, of which Gordon was a principal founder in 1919. Gordon was so well connected, in fact, that he served as a pallbearer  at the 1916 funeral of St. Paul railroad and banking magnate James J. Hill.

Gordon helped establish Somerset in part because he believed Town & Country Club had become overly congested, Rick Shefchik wrote in his classic Minnesota golf book “From Fields to Fairways.” Perhaps that same notion led Gordon to believe there was a similar opportunity in St. Paul’s northeast, where Lakeview/Hillcrest was founded in part as a response to perceived overcrowding at nearby Phalen Park Golf Course, established in 1917.

Still, it’s a stretch to think that area could have reasonably accommodated 36 more holes of golf. After all, even as early as 1921, three other clubs — Phalen, Lakeview and Northwood Country Club in North St. Paul — were already operating within five miles of the 36-hole site proposed by Gordon.

If you ask me, and I know you didn’t but I’m going to tell you anyway, I don’t see how 36 more holes would have fit into this area. (I’m operating under the assumption that the Star story referred to property only in St. Paul and not adjacent Oakdale or then-New Canada townships.) Here’s a 1916 plat map, closest to 1921 I could find:

Hayden Heights area of St. Paul, 1916 plat map. Much of the area was referred to as Furness’ Garden Lots. The diagonal road near the top-left corner represents the streetcar line that would have taken golfers to Lakeview/Hillcrest and presumably to Charles Gordon’s proposed 36-hole course. Area inside thin green line is what would become Lakeview/Hillcrest Golf Club in 1921. Plat map shows only a handful of structures in this entire area in 1916, but 36 more holes of golf there seems implausible. Plat map courtesy of University of Minnesota’s John Borchert Library.

After all that, here, at least if you are interested in golf history, is the most curious sentence in the Minneapolis Star report: “C. Raynor will be employed as architect.”

C. Raynor? No, frankly, I don’t see that.

The “C” most certainly was a typographical error, and the Raynor reference should have been to “S.,” or “Seth,” or “nationally renowned golf course architect Seth Raynor.” There was in fact a direct connection between Seth Raynor and Charles Gordon. Raynor was the architect hired by Gordon and other Somerset members to design their Mendota Heights Club in 1919, and while in Minnesota during that time period, Raynor also designed Midland Hills in Rose Township (now Roseville), which opened for play in July 1921.

But I know of no connection between Raynor and a proposed golf course in northeastern St. Paul, and none of a handful of informed golf-history sources I talked with knew of one, either.

My bottom line, I guess, is that all of this is a certain amount of ado about nothing. I’m thinking Mr. Charles W. Gordon concocted some sort of brilliant-in-his-head plan in 1921, fed it to a Minneapolis reporter late that year, and that nothing tangible ever became of 36 holes and 2,000 members and Seth Raynor in Hayden Heights.

But it’s interesting to imagine.

Thanks to Minnesota History Center oral historian Ryan Barland for digging up the Minneapolis Star story on Gordon and golf.

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

Lost golf courses,

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. 

Golf in Fergus Falls: Arrived in 1921, born earlier

Lost golf courses,

Golf has had many wonderful and skilled caddies. Among the pantheon of the all-time greats are the likes of Angelo Argea (Jack Nicklaus), Herman Mitchell (Lee Trevino), Fanny Sunnesson (Nick Faldo) and Steve Williams (Tiger Woods).

Before that, there was Robert Overgaard.

Hold on. I never said Overgaard belonged among those legendary loopers. I just said,  before that  …

Robert Overgaard caddied as a youth at one of Fergus Falls’ two known lost golf courses — Riverside Links (Minnesota lost course No. 204) — and today, at age 89, would have to be one of the very few remaining Fergus Falls citizens who has firsthand memories of the course, which was situated along the south bank of the Otter Tail River just less than a mile southwest of downtown and had a nice run for a lost course, 1922 to 1940.

Overgaard’s memories of Riverside include a fellow named Tomhave who was the club’s best player despite using only irons and who thought Overgaard was a darn good caddie.

“I caddied for Tomhave, and he used me as sort of a rabbit’s foot, “Overgaard said by phone from Fergus Falls. “I had a butch, and the first time I ever caddied for him he had a real good score, and so after that, he wanted me to caddie. He’d rub my head and say, ‘Hey, come over here, I got a tough shot here’ and he’d rub my butch haircut.”

Overgaard laughed, the distant past still worth a good chuckle.

With the help of Overgaard’s memory and a smattering of old newspaper stories, an attempt at reconstructing the Riverside course can be made (the Otter Tail County Historical Society has more newspaper stories, for anyone interested in a deeper dive):

“Fergus Golf Course Ready,” proclaimed a headline in the April 29, 1922, edition of the Fergus Falls Journal. “Golf is something new in Fergus Falls,” the story began (not true; more on that to come). The nine-hole course covered 65 acres of farmland west of Park Region College, which later would become Hillcrest Lutheran Academy. “It is decidedly rolling (Overgaard pointed out that the terrain is much flatter today), giving players all the uphill and downhill that anyone could want.

“The river banks on the course afford a wonderful view of the city and a view of the Pisgah Dam and the lake above the green.”

Kenneth Fairbairn was placed in charge of the course, which to its significant credit featured grass greens. I say significant, because many 1920s-era courses in Minnesota’s smaller towns had sand greens, which were both cheaper and inferior to grass greens. But Fergus Falls had a population of 7,581 in 1920 and a well-established group of businessmen and professionals who could make a grass-greens golf course financially viable. Three doctors – H.A. Anderson, W.L. Peterson and H.J. Laffitte — were either officers or on the board of directors.

Riverside’s business structure was unusual. “It is probably the only golf course in the state that is not operated by a golf club,” the Minneapolis Tribune reported on May 13, 1928. “The Riverside Links, Inc., is a corporation of local citizens interested in golf and aiming to stimulate interest in golf, but it operates as a public golf corporation and not a club. It has leased the 65 acre course for a period of 20 years. … It relies on the sale of playing privileges entirely for its revenue.”

Overgaard’s recollection is that the Riverside plot was owned by Elmer Adams, a senator, editor and owner of much land in Fergus Falls, and the suggestion is that Adams leased the land to the golf corporation.

Overgaard did not remember the golf course’s entire routing but said the clubhouse lay near a grove of Russian olive trees just south of the river, he estimated 200 to 300 yards west of the westernmost building on the current Hillcrest Lutheran campus. “The site of the clubhouse is relatively intact,” he said.

Incidentally, the Hillcrest Lutheran Academy Comets and their football-playing brethren in the Little Eight Conference heap indignity upon the former Riverside grounds each autumn by clomping up and down the school’s football-stadium turf. Overgaard said Riverside’s first fairway would have lain right about where Westside Drive is, with the football stadium grounds perhaps at the edge of the fairway or just into the rough. (Don’t sweat it, Comets. March on.)

The first hole, Overgaard said, finished just north of Alcott Avenue, which today is farther south than it was in the 1920s and ’30s. Alcott was the course’s southern border. The course then proceeded west and north, to within perhaps 100 yards of the Pisgah Dam, and then returned home to the east. A 1939 aerial photo indicates a ninth hole alongside the Otter Tail River, probably a long dogleg, and Overgaard remembered that hooked shots could reach a watery grave.

Riverside Golf Links, Fergus Falls. 1939 aerial photo from University of Minnesota’s John Borchert Map Library. The Otter Tail River is to the north, Alcott Avenue to the south. The golf course would still have been in play at the time of this photo, and a number of green sites and hole routings are clearly visible (click on the image for a larger view).

Overgaard caddied during the Riverside course’s latter years. “It was quite nicely kept up,” he said. “The golf course was in many ways (supported by) the efforts of the businessmen to get golf established in town. It was a civic effort and got a lot of people in town interested in the game. It was only nine holes and was boxed in. … When it was gaining some momentum in the town, it became apparent they had to move.”

A site 2.8 miles southeast of downtown became the next home to golf in Fergus Falls. In 1941, Pebble Lake Golf Course opened along the southwestern shore of Pebble Lake. Its 18-hole layout was designed by probably Minnesota’s highest-profile golf course architect at the time, Paul Coates, whose design credits also include Keller in Maplewood, Stillwater Country Club and Pine Beach West at Madden’s in East Gull Lake.

PREQUEL

Riverside was not Fergus Falls’ first lost golf course, not by a long shot. That distinction belongs to a layout that preceded Riverside by more than two decades and remains largely a mystery.

The Fergus Falls Journal announced the arrival of organized golf in town on May 2, 1901. “A number of golf players have been out nearly every evening, and the game promises to be a very popular one during the coming summer,” the newspaper reported.

On May 6, the Minneapolis Journal chimed in. “Golf at Fergus Falls,” read a small headline. “The local golf club, which has just been organized, has laid out its links … and the game promises to be a very popular one this summer. A dozen enthusiasts have been practicing industriously during the past week and a large number have ordered outfits and signified their intent of joining the club.”

A more formal report came by way of the Fergus Falls Weekly. A May 23, 1901, meeting was called at the First National Bank for the purpose of “improvement of the greens.” On May 25, the Weekly reported that the Fergus Golf Club (lost course No. 205) had been organized the day before. “The game has awakened great interest here and starts out with twenty-five charter members.”

Those charter members included:

— Robert Hannah, club president, who likely knew his cleeks from his spoons as a native Scot. He was born in Ayrshire County, Scotland, in 1860, the same year the first Open championship was played at Prestwick, less than five miles from Ayrshire. Just up the road from Prestwick are two other famed golf clubs, Royal Troon and Kilmarnock. Hannah was a director of Fergus Falls’ First National Bank and is the namesake of Robert Hannah Recreational Area, alongside the Otter Tail River and just a couple of hundred yards east of the former Riverside Links grounds.

— Dr. J.G. Vigen, who as a native Norwegian perhaps didn’t own the golfing pedigree of Hannah but who certainly held stature in Fergus Falls.

Vigen and Hannah later would become charter members at the Riverside course.

Those are the known properties of Fergus Golf Club. Unfortunately, much is unknown. My guess is that the club lasted only through the 1901 season, as I could not find any references to it in searching Fergus Falls newspapers of 1902, ’03 or ’05. In any event, Fergus holds standing in Minnesota golf history. According to my research and records, it was among the first 15 golf courses built in Minnesota and among the first three built west of St. Cloud, rivaled only by Ada Golf Club (1900) and Marshall Golf Club (also 1901).

Also unknown was the Fergus Club’s course location — and there are apparent contradictions here. The Minneapolis Journal reported that the club “has laid out its links in the southwestern part of the city.” The Fergus Falls Daily Journal reported, “The links are in the vicinity of the Jefferson school building,” which was decidedly not near the southwestern part of the city but instead was more northeast, near Mount Faith and Springen avenues. The most concrete reference, however, lends credence to the southwestern notion. “The tennis court at the corner of Vernon and Union Avenues is a thing of the past,” Wheelock’s Weekly of Fergus Falls reported on May 9, 1901. “Golf promises to supplant tennis almost entirely in this neighborhood.” The intersection of Vernon and Union lies near the current southwestern corner of downtown Fergus Falls and a quarter-mile east of Robert Hannah Recreational Area.

Golf was part of Fergus Falls’ consciousness as early as 1901, as displayed by this ad from April 29, 1901. (From Minnesota Historical Society holdings)