Mahnomen
Amount Allocated: $23,060
WPA Approval: 10/29/1935
Date: started: 1936
Date Finished: 1938 (playable)
Architect:
Population 1930: 989
Number of holes: 9
The Mahnomen Golf Course put its golf clubs before the cart, so to speak. The WPA authorities approved the building of a course in October 1935, but the city didn’t own the land for the course until mid to late November. Oops. Never mind, individuals and the city bought 80 acres of brush and “practically virgin soil” from the Schermerhorn Farms for $1000. (All WPA projects needed to be owned by a governmental organization in order to have work completed on it.) The 80 acre size seems to be on par with most of the courses the WPA worked on. [In 2001, a survey found an average 18 hole course is 150-200 acres.]
And, talk about fast, one week after the city took ownership of the land, the Mahnomen Pioneer reported that 30 men were at work on the course clearing brush and grubbing, and they would work all winter getting the site ready for landscaping and platting as soon as the frost was out of the ground.
Mahnomen seemed to have a lot of WPA projects, in addition to the golf course. In 1940, the fairgrounds, the relief office, streets, sidewalks, curb and gutter, municipal building, extensions to water and sewer, 100s of miles of roads in the county and dams to control water level.
The other thing that Mahnomn had in common with many of the other WPA courses was a dedicated group of local citizens. Money was tight, but so were their ideas about what their town should be - to be a real town, one needed to have a golf course, and if the town did not have any money, which in most cases it didn’t the local businessmen passed the hat, so to speak, and bought the land, then gifting it the town.
Urban Versus Resort Setting
Based on a report from the Golf Course Superintendent Association of America, an 18-hole golf facility, which includes bodies of water, hard structures and out-of-play areas, averages about 150 to 200 acres. Typical urban golf courses are about 110 to 120 acres, while courses in resort areas may be 170 to 190 acres. http://golftips.golfsmith.com/many-acres-needed-18-hole-golf-course-1812.html