The artifact for July 2006 is a rare surviving score card from the Healdsburg Midget Golf course, which operated in town from 1930-1933.  The late Jack Relyea, local fire fighter and Healdsburg history buff, presented the score card to Edwin Langhart and the Healdsburg City archives in 1969.  Relyea donated numerous local items in the Healdsburg Museum collection during his lifetime.   

The mini golf score card measures 3” x 5” and is made of heavy cardboard, printed on both sides.  Though used and faded with age, the object is in excellent condition.

Mini golf score card - front

Partners Ross Pool and Santi Catelli opened the new miniature golf course in August 1930.  Pool and Catelli also owned Windsor Castle, a popular restaurant and nightclub located on Old Redwood Highway in Windsor.  (Despite Prohibition, no one ever went dry at Windsor Castle!)   

In the summer of 1930, Pool and Catelli obtained a five-year lease on the Charles Strehlow property, which had frontage on both Center and North streets.  The property is now occupied by the Mitchell Shopping Center (with Longs and Raven Theater), on the west side of Center Street between North and Piper streets.   Two panoramic photos of the mini golf course, pictured here, are currently displayed in the museum’s research library.  Visible in the photos are the Center Street buildings that house Ravenous restaurant and Zin restaurant in 2006.   

Pool and Catelli hired Vernon Peck, manager of the Berkeley Country Club to lay out a tricky 19-hole course.  The managers spent $5,000 on its construction.  Adolph Heintz of Denver landscaped the mini golf course, which included several notable features, including a driving net, a wishing well (with “old oaken bucket”) and glass covered fish ponds.  The new golf course was named “the Old Oaken Bucket.”

According to the Healdsburg Tribune, 8 August 1930, the first customers to play on the new “midget golf course” were Al Garrett, Bill Hill, Charles Sheriffs and Ira Rosenberg.   The Sunshine Beauty Shop and the General Drug Store offered prizes for the best low scores in the first week by a woman and a man.  

The miniature golf course was the first and last of its kind in Healdsburg.  Despite ongoing promotional efforts, the enterprise failed.  The Depression years of the early1930s were a particularly bad time to launch a new business, especially a recreation-orientated one.  Healdsburg was still largely a farming economy, and most Healdsburg residents just did not have money to spend on leisure activities.    

Pool sold out his interest in the business to Catelli in 1931.  Catelli sold out in 1935, eventually opening the very successful restaurant, “The Rex” in Geyserville.  That was the end of miniature golf in Healdsburg.  After the close of the Old Oaken Bucket, property owner Charles Strehlow leased the Center and North street property for $1.00 to the city of Healdsburg for night baseball games.

The above was researched and written by Holly Hoods.

For more information about the Museum's collection of historical artifacts, contact the Museum