Oak Ridge Country Club

Overview: Oak Ridge Country Club in Hopkins is a private parkland course whose history is rooted in the Twin Cities' early twentieth-century Jewish golf community. The layout occupies gently rolling former farmland, with mature tree groups and classic strategic proportions rather than resort-scale spectacle. Its architecture is layered: William D. Clark created the original nine, while later work by Garrett Gill helped shape the present course. The surviving character comes from the relationship between the open land, the tree planting and the successive expansion of the routing.

History: Oak Ridge began as a Twin Cities club in the early 1920s after organizers from Minneapolis and St. Paul searched for a course that would serve both communities. William D. Clark designed the original nine holes and became the club's first professional and superintendent. The original nine were laid out during the club's first development, and a second nine was added in the early 1940s, creating the basis of the present 18-hole course. The club's current history also records a major clubhouse rebuilding on the original footprint in 2004, extending the institution while preserving its long community identity.

Did You Know? The original nine holes are now identified as the back nine, holes 10 through 18. That detail is a useful reminder that the course was built in stages and that its current scorecard is the product of a later expansion rather than a single opening-day routing.