Carter Golf Club

Carter Country Club grew out of a civic idea. In the early 1920s, Lebanon resident Augustus Carter decided the city should have a golf course that everyone could play, not just the elite, and he hired Donald Ross to design a nine-hole layout off Mechanic Street. Built around 1923, the course opened in 1924, and Carter's wife and daughter were among the first to tee off at a time when few American courses welcomed women. It remains Ross's only nine-hole course in New Hampshire, known for approach shots into classic 1920s greens. The property later passed to private developers, and a covenant from a 1986 sale requiring a nine-hole course in perpetuity became the center of a long legal fight that reached the New Hampshire Supreme Court. A 2024 settlement kept the course operating, the club reported about 160 members that year, and Carter opened again for the 2025 season as a community course right off Interstate 89.