Est. 1963 · Bancroft, Iowa
Our History
Two attempts, forty years apart, and one very stubborn idea: that Bancroft deserves a golf course of its own. This is how we got here.
A Course the Town Built Twice
North Kossuth Golf Club has been part of life in Kossuth County longer than most of our regulars have been alive — and it nearly didn't happen at all. The first version was a community project in the 1920s, run on ten-dollar memberships and local enthusiasm. It lasted about a decade before the land was left to itself.
The club that stands today is the second try, and it was every bit as much a town effort. A federal loan, a stock sale among neighbours, a borrowed farm on the edge of town, and a crew from Sioux City who knew how to turn prairie into fairways. What opened for play in June 1964 has been quietly adding stories ever since.
The course itself hasn't changed its character much: flat, fair ground that rewards a straight strike and doesn't punish a bad day too harshly. It's a course that suits a first-timer and a scratch golfer equally well — which is exactly what a small-town public course should do.
1925 – 1936
The First Attempt
Around 1925, folks from Bancroft, Swea City, Ledyard and Lakota got together and laid out a course at the Y north of town. Members paid $9.90 a year, and the local paper even felt obliged to warn ladies away from the greens in high heels. It was good golf while it lasted — but by about 1936 the course had gone quiet, and the prairie started taking it back.
1963 – 1964
The Comeback
Nearly three decades later, the community tried again. North Kossuth Golf Club, Inc. was founded in 1964, paid for by a $45,000 loan from the Farmers Home Administration and $16,500 raised by selling stock to neighbors. The land was the John Brink farm on the east edge of Bancroft — at the time, only two houses stood on it. Contractors from Leo I. Johnson Construction Co. of Sioux City shaped the land, cut the greens, tees and traps, and seeded the ground. Play began in June 1964 on a nine-hole course.
1979
A Clubhouse of Our Own
For fifteen years the golf came first and the buildings came second. In 1979 the clubhouse was completed, with extra buildings for golf cart rental, lockers and equipment. A place to hang a jacket, grab a cold drink and argue about the score — which, let's be honest, is half of what a golf club is for.
Today
Still a Neighbour's Course
The same nine holes now host three weekly leagues and more than twenty tournaments a year, from the Memorial Day 2 Person Big Cup to the season-ending Little Al Foundation Best Shot — plus Glow Ball under the lights, which is exactly as fun as it sounds. Anyone can play. That was the idea in 1925, in 1964, and it's still the idea now.
The Numbers That Built It
Every one of these came from neighbours who wanted a place to play.
$9.90
Annual dues in the 1920s
Roughly the price of a round and a sandwich these days.
$45,000
Farmers Home Administration loan
The backbone of the 1964 revival.
$16,500
Raised through stock sales
Paid for by the people who would play on it.
June 1964
First shots played
Nine holes, one very patient Iowa summer.
Come Be Part of the Story
Sixty years on, the second attempt is still going strong — and the next chapter is always being written, usually around hole 7. Give the clubhouse a call and book your tee time.