101 Years and Counting at Orono Orchards

Orono golf course’s history is on par.

Your golf course has some history when cut hayfields served as fairways and borrowed tomato cans, spade into the soil, were used as golf cups. Your golf course has some history when the fairways were watered by a team of horses, pulling a watering wagon. And your golf course really has some history when green fees were 35 cents.

Leo Feser referenced the above in a story penned in May 1971, describing the history of Orono Orchards Golf Course. (The City of Orono purchased the course from the Feser family in 1967.) Feser designed, built, played and ran the course—with lots of help from family and friends. The first green fees were sold on July 4, 1924, making this year the course’s 101st anniversary.

Orono Orchards Golf Course was the first privately owned public course in Minnesota and the first public course in the state to feature grass greens. (In 1924, all the other municipal courses played sand greens.) When it opened, the only other public courses in the Metro area were Glenwood (now Theodore Wirth Golf Course) and Columbia courses.

Kim Linder, clubhouse manager and events coordinator, says the course’s calling card is its elevation. “Growing up in Orono, I used to call it a billy goat golf course,” she says. In Feser’s history, he wrote that the course’s nickname was Coronary Hills. Because of the elevation, most Orono Orchards golfers eschew walking the course in favor of riding golf carts.

In its current configuration, Orono Orchards is a par-33 course. It does stand to change, however, as there are plans to extend the first and second holes. “It’s a process,” Linder says. Ultimately, the goal is to transform the nine-hole course into a par-36 course.

When asked about a signature hole, Linder says it’s the 183-yard, par-3 fifth hole. “Number five is where the original clubhouse was,” she says. “It features a pond and a water fountain.”

Linder says Orono Orchards’ Tuesday men’s league is the longest running men’s league in the state. Its youth league is just the opposite, as it’s relatively new. “Before I came here, which is about four years ago, kids weren’t allowed to play without an adult,” Linder says. “That’s crazy, as junior players are the future of the sport.”

Some 15,000 rounds were played on Orono Orchards last year. This factors in losing 10 days because of inclement weather and 49 days when golf carts couldn’t be used. (There isn’t a cart path, and the grounds were too wet.)

If you’re one of those hitting the course this year, consider that over 100 years ago, Frank Eisinger, a charter member of the golf course construction crew, would take the ground’s watering wagon home at the end of each day and refill the water tank from a windmill-powered well. He’d return in the morning with his wagon, pulled by a team of horses, to water the greens—in preparation of welcoming another round of golfers.

Winter on the Course

The City of Orono hosts a tree-lighting ceremony on the Orono Orchards Golf Course grounds on the first Saturday of December. Santa attends and arrives not by sleigh, but via an Orono fire truck. The day’s festivities are followed by what has been described as the best fireworks of the season. (Bonus: no mosquitoes!)

When there’s snow, the course features free sledding throughout the winter season, and the clubhouse opens for snacks and hot chocolate on designated days. Last winter, the city, for a first time, planned to groom cross-country ski trails.

Orono Orchards Golf Course
265 Orono Orchards Road S., Wayzata; 952.473.1909
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