Wawenock Golf Club

Wawenock Golf Club opened on August 11, 1926, in Walpole on Maine's midcoast, founded as a for-profit venture by Ohio businessman Murray Shipley and local bank president Leon Dodge, who also hoped the course would lift area real estate sales. Golden Age architect Wayne Stiles designed the nine holes. The club was socially lively even after the 1929 crash and twice hosted the Maine Open, in 1931 and 1940, but by the late 1930s unpaid taxes, falling membership, and debt had brought it to the brink. In 1946 Cleveland businessman George E. Merrifield bought the course from the bank that held its mortgages, and his family led the club for decades. In 1979 philanthropist Elizabeth Noyce funded its purchase from the Merrifield trust, and in 1980 Wawenock became a nonprofit governed by volunteer trustees. After considering expansion to eighteen holes, the trustees chose to remain a nine-hole club, renamed it Wawenock Golf Club in 2004, and celebrate its centennial in 2026.