Detroit Lakes Country Club

Detroit Lakes Country Club

Total cost of the Project:

Amount Allocated: $33,341

Date: started: September 26,1935

Date Finished:

Architect: Hugh Vincent Feehan

Number of holes: 18

There are several unusual things about he Detroit Lakes Golf Course

1) It was privately owned before the WPA

2) They just gave it to the City

3) They completely rebuilt the course, with a new architect

4) The city used WPA men to work on the course

5) The Golf Course corporation” paid the amount the city was supposed to pay as its share of the rebuilding

6) There were a LOT of men working, and the weather that winter was terrible, but after starting in October, they held the Palm to ... tournament in August (compare that to Keller being shut down for two years, and they had modern machinery).

7) The City leased it back to the golf course corp who runs it today.

8) They found an Indian skull on the highest part of the course on fairway #1.

There are a few courses I have included in the list of courses the WPA built because they were completely redesigned and ripped up - basically starting over in the same location. This is one of the two courses, Benson being the second.

The existing course here was founded in 1916 by 12 men who did not know how to play golf, but thought there was a need for this recreation in the resort area. According to legend, the architect who designed the original course layout arrived from Chicago, “full of opinions and scotch and left on the afternoon train.” The original course was a nine hole course, then in the early 1920s, an additional nine holes were added.

Hugh Vincent Feehan spent a lot more time on this course than his predecessor. Feehan was a landscape architect and engineer, who also designed the Virginia Golf Course, many of the buildings at St. Thomas and the North Dakota Peace Garden.

A happy coincidence occurred to the Detroit Lakes course in 1935, the course was having a little trouble paying its bills, but it was ‘discovered’ if the city of Detroit Lakes owned the course, it could be rebuilt - the Board of Directors sold it to the city for $1.00 on September 5, 1935. On September 25, 1935, the WPA approved the plan to rebuild the course.

[now this doesn’t make sense to me] One source says the “Directors agreed to finance this project entirely and run the Country Club at not expense to the City and to assume the debt in carrying out he rebuilding of the golf course and clubhouse.” After the course was rebuilt, the “City leased the golf course and clubhouse back to the original stockholders for the purpose of managing and financing its further growth and development. This arrangement continues to the present day.”