Waterville Valley Golf Club

Golf in Waterville Valley dates to 1898, when vacationing guests near Elliot's Hotel picked rocks by hand from a pasture on the valley floor and laid out the first few holes themselves. Over the decades those makeshift holes became a nine-hole course played by generations of visitors, complete with quirks such as two holes that required shots across a state highway. In 2005 the Waterville Company, prompted by the neighboring Moose Run residential development, carried out a roughly $500,000 renovation: a design team from Oncourse Golf built three new holes and redesigned three others, while the project added a half-acre pond that doubles as a hazard and irrigation source, a new irrigation system and a new pro shop with a screened porch. Only three of the original holes remain, but the short nine is still counted among the oldest courses in New Hampshire.