Miniature Golf In Charleston
The game was invented atop Lookout Mountain, Georgia, where Garnet
Carter owned 700 acres that he and Frieda Carter, his wife, built
attractions on and billed “Fairyland.” According to one story,
Carter invented mini-golf to keep his inn guests entertained, naming it
Tom Thumb to keep with the theme. “Other accounts claim either that
Garnet built the course to occupy regular golfers while the big course
was being completed or to entertain the children of his guests,”.
One 1930 Popular Science article describes the sport of “midget golf”
as “America’s newest big industry.” “In August 1930,” writer Hilary
Greenbaum and Dana Rubinstein for The New York Times, “the Commerce
Department estimated that of the 25,000 mini-golf courses in the
country, more than half had been built since January.”
But, they also write, the mini-golf fad was the last of the 1920s crazes for
quick-run ideas like flagpole sitting, mahjong and dance marathons. The
original mini-golf craze quickly faded, and wouldn’t be picked up again
until the 1950s.
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Oddly enough,
miniature golf came roaring to Charleston just after the stock market
crash of 1929. In 1930, courses were being built as fast of the
owners could locate property. Here you will see the Ads and
articles that were printed in the Charleston Daily Mail and Gazette,
mostly from 1930 when the fad hit so hard that everyone wanted to
play, stock market crash or no stock market crash. We are
often told that 1929 was the worst time to be alive in America, but
this topic proves that wrong to an extent, at least here in Charleston
because people were spending
their money to PLAY.
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At the bottom of this page, you will see the controversy surrounding this location, which was on
Kanawha Street (now Kanawha Blvd) just off Broad Street (now Leon Sullivan)
This course was owned by the Daniel Boone Hotel and was across the street where the old Capitol building once stood.
 
Then this one opened close to the Capitol Grade School
Everyone wanted to get into the act, so the very popular Viking restaurant and club
5 miles up Elk river also built a course. This club would become "infamous".
Naturally the West Side had to have a course, and so they did, at 23 Virginia Street W.
  
Not to be left out, the Negro's had TWO courses. One was locally owned, while the other was a Tom Thumb course.
 
Wilson Street was later renamed Smith Street. Seems they had a little accident there.
So.... how did it work out for all these courses?
The one course was on Ruffner & Wilson, not Hansford.
BUT GETTING BACK TO THE FIRST TOM THUMB GOLF COURSE:
SEEMS THE NEXT DOOR NEIGHBOR WASN'T REAL HAPPY ....
The golf course was where that apartment building is today.
This is would have liked to seen. This was 1931, and the fad is almost over
It's interesting to note that Miniature Golf brought in so much money
just after the stock market crash that they built them all over town,
but a year later, the fad was almost over. Did people decide that
they'd better hold on to the money that had?
Or was it a seasonal thing, that by the following summer people were
just not as interested anymore? Who know? Fads are
like that. They come and then go just as fast. It would be
another 25 years or so before Charleston would get another miniature
golf course, which again didnt last very long.
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