The Floete Mansion and the Okoboji Club

Franklin Floete was a successful lumberman in the grandest style, and he demonstrated it to the world when, in 1917, he built a mansion on the west shore of West Lake Okoboji. Owner of more than 20 lumber yards throughout South Dakota and Iowa—including yards in Spencer, Milford, and Hartley—his business empire expanded to include real estate and directorship in banks throughout the region. So, yes, he had money.

Purchasing 265 acres in 1916 for $51,000—or $20,000 according to later reports—newspapers initially said he planned on building “a fine summer home” on the land the next year for $25,000. Eventually built for $40,000 and with elaborate interior furnishings costing almost twice as much, it was a showplace.

In addition to its distinctive “Southern plantation” design with broad porches and columns, “The Highlands,” as the Floetes named it, came with a fair amount of exaggeration. While it boasted a total of 32 ornately-furnished rooms, the opulence tended to cloud reason.

A reporter from the Beacon gushed: “On the first floor, there are drawing rooms, library, kitchen and rooms, a spacious hall, four large porches [with] fireplaces in each,” the newspaper reported in 1917. “We tried to count, but got lost, but we were told that in all there were 20 fire places and 13 bathrooms.” In truth, it was 32 rooms with 15 fireplaces.

Franklin Floete visited from his St. Paul, Minn. home only occasionally, and died in 1922. With few ties to the area, his wife and family were seldom there. The most constant resident was a caretaker.

In 1927, a group of local men with an eye toward promotion had suggested that President Calvin Coolidge use The Highlands as summer his White House. For weeks, news articles traced the origin of the offer, and various trips to and from Washington to meet with staff and other dignitaries, but it was all for naught— in May, “Silent Cal” selected the Black Hills that summer.

The Empire Club in Sioux City began the process right afterward to purchase the house, grounds, and neighboring West Okoboji Golf Club…but details were many and time-consuming and the deal fell through when the stock market crashed in 1929. Numerous other groups presented offers for the next two decades, with none being fully developed or accepted.

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Until 1946, that is, when the house and 70 acres overlooking Millers Bay were sold to create The Okoboji Club, an exclusive organization which grew to about 1500 members. With the mansion being the club house, The Okoboji Club utilized The Highlands’ many rooms (including apartments over the 5-car garage) for vacationing guests. Between the house and cabins built on the ground, the club could accommodate 200 guests, and was the focus of Okoboji’s social elite. In July 1948, baseball great Babe Ruth even stayed there.

Exclusivity, high style, dancing, great dining and grand accommodations ensured long-term success of Okoboji’s most highly-regarded club.

All this ended one windy April afternoon in 1951 when suspected faulty electrical wiring started an attic fire. The once-grand structure was consumed in a matter of hours, leaving only smoldering rubble and four brick chimneys. The loss was too great to overcome and no new club was constructed. However, the owner, Lester Heisheimer of Sioux Falls did add more cottages to the grounds for vacationers, so The Okoboji Club lived on for a few years, albeit modestly.

In 1954 the land was sold to the Presbyterian Churches of Fort Dodge and Sioux City to create the Presbyterian Camp. The remaining chimneys were dynamited, with the debris moved to a ravine south of the former mansion and the land graded in a continuous slope from the highway to the lakefront.

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(The breathtaking 1917 Floete mansion as seen from the lawn to the lake.)

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(Hyperbole about the mansion continued, even from this excerpt from a 1933 news article by Hattie P. Elston, author of the Okoboji history, White Men Follow After.)

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(The Floete Mansion from an aerial photo in 1930)