Photographed September 24, 2012

Words by Mr. Tee

In the early days of A Couple of Putts, we started out by tracking down all the mini golf courses of my youth in the northwest suburbs outside of Minneapolis.  Online information wasn’t abundant but my memory of course locations for places like Lilli Putt and Goony Golf was still intact. Within miles of the two aforementioned courses was Gasoline Alley in Blaine. No, not the Waiting for Guffman setting.

I knew it had closed and was curious about the remnants. When we arrived on location, we found the overgrown remains of what was once a place with mini golf, video games, go-karts, and bumper boats. I snapped the photos below on my phone from behind the fence and within minutes of arriving, a vehicle pulled up into the parking lot. A person confronted us and questioned us about why we were there. They were responsible for overseeing the property and lived in the area. We told him about our blog and that we just wanted to see what shape the course was in since I played it a bunch as a kid. He let us go without much more of a hassle and we took off a little shook but how quickly that guy showed up.

My memories of this place are faint and my quick searches online for archival photos came up with nothing. If you have old photos of the course, we’d love to add them to this post. Oddly enough, I found an article from a local paper story about an bungled burglary of a boat on the property two months after we visited. Glad to see it’s still a popular destination even its dilapidated state.

Found this urban exploring video on YouTube that features the mini golf course:

The rest of the photos I took from behind the parking lot fence…

Walk around the former go-kart track posted by someone online. At one point, Gasoline Alley had a class of go-karts that required one to have a driver’s license and training!

Update March 2018:

Photo courtesy of Twin Cities photographer Darin K. He posted this image of the main building being demolished in January 2018 on twitter. The land and former mini golf course are fully leveled now.

History of Gasoline Alley from a Star Tribune article 2/9/18