Name/Title
History, A Brief History of the Rock River Country Club and its OrganizationDescription
Book, A Brief History of the Rock River Country Club and its Organization. Written by Edward W. Hooker. About 1963. There are two copies. One is stored in the main room of the Waupun Heritage Museum on the main floor in the class bookcase on the top 3 shelf..
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A BRIEF HISTORY OF ROCK RIVER COUNTRY CLUB AND ITS ORGANIZATION
BY
E. W. HOOKER (written about 1963)
Prior to the organization of Rock River Country Club, golf was not an entirely unknown game in Waupun, as several families had been members of Tuscumbia Country Club at Green Lake from about 1910. Incidentally, Tuscumbia was the second golf club built west of Buffalo, and it was then only a nine hole course. About 1921 or 1922, Fox Lake organized a golf club with the help of several families in Waupun who had originally been members of Tuscumbia and who welcomed the opportunity of playing golf nearer home.
In 1924, Don Newcomb and I finished college and law school, respectively, and we both entered into a business or profession at Waupun in which we expected to spend the rest of our lives, and we both felt that we wanted a golf course at Waupun, if one could be had.
Our first attempt ended in complete failure. Buelah Nickerson, a descendent of one of the very early families in Waupun, owned a farm on Fox Lake Road, with the old stone farm house directly across from the Freriks farm. We made an arrangement to lease the property from her on a long term basis with an option to buy, for a very fair return to her, and went out and signed up enough members to put the deal across. Gullible youngsters! We learned about women from her! When we went back to close the deal on the original terms, she rebuffed them, and wanted twice what we had agreed upon. Unfortunately, as it then seemed, we had not had the foresight to put the original proposition in writing.
For Waupun, this was probably the best break we could have had. We had been carried away with the "possibilities" of the old stone house as a clubhouse, and you can well imagine what we would have been tied up with, with that anachronism, at the present time. For the time being, we just dropped the matter.
Sometime in 1926, I saw the legal notice for the sale of the John L. Newton property to close up that estate, which was then in the hands of another law firm in Waupun. Upon consultation with the attorney for the estate, I found they wanted to sell sixty acres of pasture land three-quarters of a mile from the highway, without any means of access thereto, and which was across the Rock River as well. They were very anxious to sell as they needed funds to pay debts, funeral expenses and expenses of administration. We decided to look it over.
Chris Gerrits, Rush Gregory (who was then running the Classic Theater), Don Newcomb and I went out to inspect the property early in March or April of 1926. The snow had just melted and the river was full to overflowing. Rush had a pair of boots and he carried the rest of us across the river. On the other side, things looked a bit better. We could see possibilities, and we decided we ought to try and buy. Buy? With what?
We were told that we could buy the sixty acres (which included the marsh land of about ten acres just north of number three fairway) for $2700, but we were young lads without any cash, and the sale was coming up in the next few days. Luckily, we had an ace in the hole – my dad. He put up the money for us to buy the property. We were in business.
Our first problem was access. This was six or seven years before anyone thought of the County Park, which was then known as Newton's Woods, and belonged to Jason Newton, a relative of John's, from whose estate we had purchased our property. Again we were in luck. Clyde Harris, Jean Peter's father, and a nephew of Jason's, had always been interested in sports and athletic activities, and he immediately became interested in the new golf club, although he had never played golf. He arranged to sell us a twenty-foot right-of-way across the Jason Newton property for a very reasonable consideration. Unfortunately, the south end of the right-of-way was a swamp hole, and we had to spend many hard-to-get dollars to fill it with crushed rock for a firm road bed.
Again, we were in luck. The State had condemned some crushed rock, which a contractor had planned to use on a new wing at Central State Hospital, as too large for poured concrete, and we bought the rock, which was perfect for our purposes, for a fraction of whit it would have cost us otherwise. In those days, the Prison was producing cinders, and giving them away for the hauling, and we surfaced the rest of the drive with them. Alas, after a few weeks travel and the resultant pulverizing and a couple of good wind storms, there weren't many cinders left, but we could get through anyway. Later, after the county purchased the Park property, there was no longer any road problem.
We had another difficulty. The south line of the John Newton property which we had purchased, or I should say, "which my father had purchased", ran just south of the present tool shed and just across the line of the river. In other words, we had to cross the river to get to our property. This wasn't good, either from the proposed layout of the course, or from a parking problem. (We hadn't gone as far as thinking about a clubhouse at this time).
Jim Davison had the second mortgage on the property where the clubhouse stands and he agreed to release the same and helped us get the deed and a release from the first mortgage for something like $225. We sure had friends
We were now ready to lay out the course. Some of use had known Joe Thrasher and Matt DeMoss from Tuscumbia at Green Lake for many years, and we asked them to come down and help us lay it out. At this time there were trees all over the property just like there are now between the fairways. Joe took one look at the property and said, "Sell it for a pasture, or give it away, and get some high ground". But we prevailed on them to take a second look, and we came up with the present layout.
The whole course was built around number 6, which I think you will agree is one of the best golf holes in the area. We ought to have put the green about fifty yards farther south, but, as you can visualize from the terrain, there was a mound just north of the present green, and we tried to cut off the top of that and put the fill in the hole where the green now is. For several years you could hardly cut into the turf north of number 6, as we had cut down to the clay. Over the years, the turf has been built up so that problem is gone.
Another problem developed. We number 1 fairway going out, number 6 coming back, and number 7 going out again, but we didn't have enough width in our property to get back again without crowding the fairways too close together and removing all the trees and running the hazard of players getting hit. We needed more land. Again we had help. Garret Rexwinkel, John and Harriet's father, owned the property just west of number 8 fairway. He agrees to sell a five rod strip along the east side of his property for the very nominal sum of $150, plus three years membership in the club. We gladly accepted.
Our earlier experience with the Nickerson debacle had taught us to be not too naive. We decided to sign up members for three years, as we knew it would take at least that long to complete the course. That was probably the smartest thing we did.
We also decided to form our organization along the lines of the Tuscumbia plan. In other words, we formed two corporations. One corporation would own the land, repaying my father for what he had advanced for it, and would develop the course. This corporation was Rock River Realty Co., which would lease the land to Rock River Country Club for enough money to pay the taxes on the land and 6% dividend on the funds advanced by the stockholders. It would have been nice to have only one corporation, but in the twenties there weren't enough people who had enough money to pay stiff enough initiation fees to give us the funds to buy and build the course, so we had to pursue the other plan. We went out and sold stock, about $10,000 worth. We ran out of money. The suckers, including ourselves, all had stock. We needed more money. No one wanted any more stock. We decided to mortgage the course and we got out a note issue for $5,000, and went back principally to our stockholders, including ourselves, and said to them, "Of course, you knew you were taking a chance on the stock, but on this mortgage, you can't run any risk as the security is there". Anyway, we sold it. You know what happened. The stock was redeemed at 10c on the dollar, and the notes at 50c on the dollar, after about 25 years without dividends or interest. Sure, we could have foreclosed, but who wanted to wreck the club.
We put men to work, and after a good start, Clarence A. Shaler, to whom Waupun is indebted for many benefactions, called our directors together and told us he would build and donate a clubhouse. That was probably the capstone of our activities, and made possible the club we now enjoy.
It was Mr. Shaler's plan to build the clubhouse with siding from logs we had cut from our fairways. So we rented a portable saw mill, but after we cut a few logs in thirds, the middle third to be used in construction and the two outsides for siding, aside from the fact that the trees which had been cut, varied all the way from basswood, through elm, white ash, cherry, several kinds of oak, to hickory and iron wood, the logs were not long enough or straight enough to make decent siding, and the original plan was reluctantly, but wisely, given up in favor of conventional siding.
One thing led to another. With the clubhouse, electricity became a must. The local utility refused to build almost a mile and a half of line from the city limits, which were then just west of the Main Street and Fox lake Road intersection, but they offered to sell us poles and wire, and after we had built the transmission line, electric current would be metered at the city limits so that we would have to absorb the line loss, which was considerable. We went ahead, procured the necessary easements, and put in the poles. Along the county line, bed rock is quite near the surface, and our long poles didn't have much ground support and tilted quite crazily, and I can still remember one pole that leaned over the highway, supported by the wires rather than the other way around. Fortunately, before the poles fell down, they were reset with small charges of dynamite to blast post holes in the rock. A little later, when the County Park was developed, they persuaded us to sell them current from our line, and we were in the public utility business, without the benefit of Public Service Commission approval.
Later, E. D. Doney and Dr. T. M. Welch, who had been wonderful backers of us youngsters from the beginning, built and donated the east wing of the clubhouse which, until the 1963 remodeling, was the men's locker room. Truly, Rock River Country Club was a community enterprise. We started construction in 1926 and had a few holes playable by 1928 and were not fully in operation until 1929. Of the original members, who paid $25 a year in dues in real hard pre-devaluated dollars, many dropped out after the course was completed and considered their $75 contribution as their assistance in a community activity.
We spent $700 in dynamite to blast out the stumps of trees cut from the fairways. You probably noticed that number 4 green is not level like the others. You should have seen as it was originally laid out; there were humps a foot high, but over the years of rolling and mowing, they have (alas) been flattened out. We felt that because of the short yardage on this hole for a par four, we ought to make it a little tougher to make your par.
Number 2 fairway had been an open clearing, and there were no trees to be removed. In the fall of the year, this area was a convention ground for all the snakes in the south half of Fond du Lac County. I never saw so many grass snakes ins my life. After a few years they apparently looked for new quarters, but you can imagine Lucille Hooker's shock on reaching into the cup on the second hole to retrieve her ball, and finding a snake curled up at the bottom, or the time Estelle Wagner laid her golf bag down at home and a garter snake crawled out across the living room. Nice house pet!
The story of Rock River Country Club would be incomplete without some mention of our crew of convicts. We were a little late with the idea, but about 1930, after the course had been completed, someone suggested we might be able to get a crew of convicts to maintain the course. The state had permitted the city tp hire convicts at 25c per day for municipal improvements, and with a bit of help from our good member, Warden Oscar Lee, we able to sell the Board of Control on the idea that this golf course was at least as quasi-municipal undertaking. They would not let the men out in groups of less than 25, which costs us $6.25 per day plus the guards wages. Naturally, we had to retain a greens keeper to direct the activities, but for a couple of years we had the best maintained golf course in the United States. If we had only thought of them when we actually needed help in building the course. In 1932 or 1933, when the depression began to be felt pretty severely out in the country, the State called the deal off, as they were afraid that they might be criticized for taking jobs away from civilians. This was a blessing in disguise, for with a dwindling membership, we had trouble paying one man, let alone trying to scrape enough cash together for what amounted to the pay of three people.
Originally, the river beds were soft muck, and any ball that dropped in was usually lost. Clyde Harris donated the gravel to fill the beds of the Rock River and Mink Creek, and over the years you have him to thank for a considerable saving in golf balls. By this time, perhaps, there might have been enough golf balls in the muck so that gravel would have been unnecessary.
While we purchased grass seed for the fairways on the northern part of the course, by the time we were ready to seed numbers 1, 2, 6, 7, 8 and 9, the natural grass had seeded itself on the parts that we had leveled and graded, so that you are playing on turf on the south portion of the course just as it had been from time immemorial.
In the first few years we drew water from town for the greens, and the caterers had to haul drinking water from town in milk cans, but after an exceptionally dry summer, when the river completely dried up, and we could walk across it anywhere, and when we almost lost our bent greens, we had to drill a well, which has been on use ever since.
You have all noticed the hole just east of number 3 tee. Now, there was a real idea. About 100 yards east, there is a spring in the former James Whooley property, and like the good neighbor that he was, he gave us permission to tap the spring and run a pipe line to our property so that thirsty golfers could get a drink of pure spring water after two holes of golf on a hot day. We had to dig the hole to get fall enough from the spring, and we put in stone steps to get to the bottom and the end of the pipe line. Too bad; this was a pipe dream that went sour. The water ended up in just a trickle, and was so warm that it would have worked better for use in a hot water bottle than for drinking purposes.
The tornado of about ten years ago, and the natural attrition through the years have removed many of our original trees and the course is at least two strokes easier that it was when first laid out.
Few of the original members are still with us. We worked hard. For myself, I think I spent the equivalent of at least one day a week for two or three years on the organization and development of the course, and many others did likewise. Later, it was a bit easier.
Those of us who are still here are proud and happy that we have been succeeded by such enthusiastic and capable officers and directors, but if you think you have troubles and feel sorry for yourselves, just remember what we had to live through. There was never enough money. Every fall we had to carry debts over into the next year. Every January the directors met and paid their own dues so the Treasurer would have enough money to pay the real estate taxes. But we muddled through, and we enjoyed making it go.
Good luck to you all.
E. W. Hooker (Died in December 1982)Acquisition
Accession
2007.0017Source or Donor
Robert Malnory and Ges SchrankAcquisition Method
Gift
