Tag Archives: lost golf courses

Lost courses, or just my imagination?

Golf history, Lost golf courses,

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

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

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

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

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

Digging in:

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

A decade later, I remain puzzled.

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

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

From University of Minnesota’s John Borchert Map Library

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cheers.

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.

 

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 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.