Minnesota Golfer - Summer 2016 - 20

the lost course of FERNDALE
Club and Roadside Golf Club (St. Paul), Winona Golf Club
(already defunct by 1899), Meadow-Brook in Winona, Bryn
Mawr in Minneapolis, and Hazen and Ward Burton's threehole
layout, later expanded to nine holes, on their Chimo estate
in Deephaven. (Northland Country Club in Duluth and the
courses at Minikahda and Camden Park, both in Minneapolis,
also debuted in 1899.)
The Ferndale layout stands as quite the curiosity. Its physiTHEODORE
WIRTH GC
cal and chronological footprint was Lilliputian. Its six holes
covered 1,135 yards, less than the combined length of the par5
third (633 yards) and the par-4 12th (518 yards) on Hazeltine's
Ryder Cup course. And the Ferndale course existed for
one season and one season only-a mere few months' worth
of spoons, cleeks and mashies. Yet the course and the people
associated with it had remarkable ties to the very foundations
of Minnesota golf.
A July 27, 1899, entry in The Courant, a newly minted Minneapolis
social magazine, described the layout in some detail
and included this passage: " Mrs. Howard Mansfield, of New
York, Mrs. Frank T. Heffelfinger, Mrs. George Chase Christian
are among the women players seen oftenest on the course. "
Mrs. Frank T.'s first name was Lucia. Lucia Louise Peavey was
the daughter of Minneapolis grain magnate Frank Hutchinson
Peavey. Born in 1873, she married another man named
Frank-Frank Totton Heffelfinger-in 1895. The couple lived
at Ferndale, on F.H. Peavey's 111-acre estate, known as Highcroft,
complete with a working dairy farm, lavish flower garden
and 30-room mansion. On Jan. 23, 1899, a few months before
winter dissipated and Ferndale's practice course debuted, its
first hole located near the southern edge of the Highcroft estate,
Lucia gave birth to her second son: Totton Peavey Heffelfinger.
So it is entirely possible that the first golf hole ever seen (albeit
through 6-month-old eyes that wouldn't have known a
dogleg from a dog biscuit) by Totton P. Heffelfinger-founder
of Hazeltine National Golf Club and its broad-shouldered, internationally
renowned course-was one of the six little practice
holes at Ferndale.
A leap of logic? Maybe not. Though Frank Totton Heffelfinger
weaned young Tot largely on Minikahda and, to a lesser extent,
Town & Country Club, two city courses to which he held
membership, the son likely spent his first newborn months in
the company of his mother, perhaps close to home. And perhaps
close to-or on-the Ferndale layout.
That speculation was presented to a modern-day Heffelfinger
who found it plausible. After being apprised in mid-2015
for the first time of the Ferndale layout and The Courant story,
Tom Heffelfinger, a grandson of Totton P. and a former U.S.
attorney who lives in Edina, soon speculated that when his
grandmother Lucia played the Ferndale course, " it was either
with [Totton P.] in tow or as a break from mothering her son. "
F
orefathers, that's what they were.
Pun entirely intended.
The men (and, yes, a few
women) who played or perhaps just
watched golf at the little practice
course in Wayzata's Ferndale enclave
in 1899 had inimitable connections to
the development of the game in Minnesota.
Many were prominent figures
in the early days of courses such as
Minikahda, Town & Country Club,
Woodhill, Interlachen and Hazeltine.
Some of the Ferndale forefathers,
even if their corpuscles were tinged
decidedly blue, did not believe golf
should be recreation strictly for the
monied elite. At least two were key
figures in bringing golf to the masses
in Minnesota.
Their conduit was the Minneapolis
Park Board.
18
MINNESOTAGOLFER Summer 2016
From 1900 through 1915, public
golf was periodically raised-and
then dropped-as a topic of interest
regarding Minneapolis parks. By
1915, Columbia and Glenwood parks
had been mentioned as possible golf
course sites.
At the April 28, 1916, meeting of the
Minneapolis Park Board, parks superintendent
Theodore Wirth submitted a
recommendation to the board. It read,
in part: " It seems possible to establish
a temporary nine-hole golf course at
Glenwood Park, north of 6th Avenue,
which could be laid out and put into
operation at a cost of $500.00.
" I recommend ... that the course be
constructed at once. "
Among the park board members
receiving Wirth's recommendation
were William H. Bovey and Edmund
J. Phelps-both Ferndale landowners.
Bovey's family had long occupied lots
at Ferndale, and his 1915 summer residence
lay about 100 yards from where
the six-hole Ferndale practice course
finished. Phelps, who owned a Ferndale
estate known as The Arbors, was a park
board member from 1905-23. (Many
Ferndale property owners were Minneapolis
residents who spent summers
on the Wayzata peninsula.)
The park board met again on May 2,
1916, and considered a report by the
Standing Committee on Playgrounds
that echoed Wirth's recommendation
that a golf course be built at Glenwood
Park, " and that no charge or fee be
made for the use of such course. "
The board adopted the recommendation.
Glenwood Park Golf Links was
established. The presumption is that it
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PHOTO BY W.P. RYAN
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