Bald Peak Colony Club incorporated in 1920, part of Thomas G. Plant’s lakeside development below his “Lucknow/Castle in the Clouds” estate; the club’s own history places first ground-breaking soon after incorporation.
Ross was engaged to lay out the golf course on the hillside above Moultonborough Bay, with state preservation officials later noting that the routing created intentional lake-and-mountain vistas and has remained fundamentally intact since the club’s earliest years.
The course officially opened on August 1, 1921, and the club celebrated its profile the following summer with an international exhibition: Francis Ouimet and Jesse Guilford versus J.H. Taylor and Sandy Herd, a match documented in contemporary photographs and in the state’s National Register announcement. Top100GolfCourses summarizes the founding and debut similarly, placing the course’s creation within 1920–22.
As to Ross’s intent on this particular property, the hillside setting dictated a routing that rises to and falls from ridge lines to frame Winnipesaukee and the Ossipee and Belknap ranges; the state’s listing emphasizes those designed vistas, and the club’s hole descriptions repeatedly highlight downhill approaches oriented to the water (notably the 4th and 5th). Ross relied more on ground contours—natural ridges, berms, and grassed mounds—than on sand, a choice consistent with the site’s stony glacial soils; Forse & Nagle later inventoried “well over 60 mounds and berms” against only nineteen original bunkers.
There is no documentary evidence of a full second Ross construction phase after the 1921 opening. The modern consensus is that the original routing has endured with comparatively modest alteration, a point made both in the National Register material and independent course profiles. (See uncertainty note below regarding occasional attributions to Ross associate George Meredith and to Plant.)
Unique design characteristics
Bald Peak’s most unusual, Ross-specific trait is its card: five par fives and five par threes, with only a single par four over 400 yards (“Westward Ho,” the 10th). The course is also remarkably lightly bunkered—roughly twenty sand hazards across all eighteen holes—placing a premium on approach position to greens defended by false fronts, tiers, and fall-aways.
Ross’s preference here for mounds/berms as strategic hazards is observable from the opening shot. At the 1st (“Get Away”) a diagonal, grass-covered berm intrudes on the fairway, daring the player to carry for angle and length—precisely the sort of ground feature Forse & Nagle catalogued during their archival work.
Specific holes concentrate key Ross elements as they survive today:
• No. 4 (“Lake View”): A downhill second plays to a “severely sloped” green with a pronounced false front that sheds timid approaches back into short grass—a classic Ross device used here to accentuate the lake-facing vista he built into the routing.
• No. 5 (“Punch Bowl”): A short, drop-shot par three where the putting surface has distinct levels; the club’s description notes the sand-protected, tiered target, exactly as external profiles have long emphasized.
• No. 12 (“Battleship”): The iconic plateau/“volcano” par three, long photographed and captioned locally as “The Battleship,” with the green rising out of the surrounds and falling away steeply on all sides—a Ross form he used sparingly elsewhere (e.g., Wannamoisett No. 3).
• No. 17 (“The Terrace”): A demanding par three to a multi-tiered green with a stout false front; the club warns that even putts can roll off the lower shelf, confirming the green’s sharp interior contours.
• No. 10 (“Westward Ho”): At 433 yards it is the lone “long” two-shotter and the backbone par four in a card otherwise defined by par-three/five cadence.
Routing nuance is another Bald Peak marker. Forse & Nagle point out that the course returns to the clubhouse multiple times (9, 11, and 15), enabling short loops, and that the finish runs 5-3-5-3-5, a rare closing rhythm that could only have been accepted because the land naturally offered it.
Finally, the site’s rural fabric surfaces in small but telling ways. As Ron Forse has observed, parts of the routing still cross old New England stone walls—a feature Ross’s crew covered and grassed to become playable landforms.
Taken together, the clearest surviving Ross “reads” are the 5th, 12th, and 17th greens (for their intact, distinctive contouring) and the 1st (for the ground-hazard diagonal), all documented by club text and modern restoration notes rather than generic Ross tropes.
Historical significance
Within Ross’s chronology, Bald Peak sat among a prolific 1921 season that also saw the openings of Mid Pines (NC) and Teugega (NY); contemporary and retrospective accounts connect Ross’s presence in New England and his friendship with Plant during that period. JayFlemma.com The 1922 Ouimet–Guilford exhibition against Taylor–Herd quickly elevated the club’s regional profile and fixed hole names (e.g., “Battleship”) in New Hampshire golf lore; period images in the state archives corroborate the players and the celebratory use of the 12th green.
As to critical standing, Top100GolfCourses currently places Bald Peak prominently within New Hampshire, noting the pars distribution, low bunker count, and the course’s relative lack of alteration over a century. The New Hampshire Division of Historical Resources and the U.S. Department of the Interior recognized the club in 2023–24 with listing on the National Register of Historic Places as a particularly intact 1920s rural country club set with a lakeside Ross course.
Current condition / integrity
The routing remains as Ross set it, and the club’s recent National Register listing underscores the overall integrity of the property. Concord Monitor In the mid-2000s, Ron Forse and Jim Nagle developed a master plan, rebuilding bunkers (2005–06) and documenting that Ross originally relied on roughly nineteen bunkers and “well over 60” mounds/berms as the course’s primary hazards. JayFlemma.com A subsequent, larger restoration/renovation concluded by 2021 focused on recapturing Ross features rather than recasting them: fairways were widened; nearly every green was expanded back to the edges of its original pad; internal contours were added on “two or three” greens where historical evidence indicated lost movement; shorter forward tees were introduced, some blended seamlessly into fairways; and a handful of bunkers were added where documentation or strategic need warranted (notably in the 3rd fairway and five new bunkers influencing play on the 18th).
These works left the course’s Ross DNA highly legible today. The false fronts and fall-aways at 4, 15, and 17 remain functioning as design, not just aesthetic, defenses. The signature plateau at 12 still plays as a decisive one-shotter. Mounded ground hazards continue to dictate angles at 1, 3, and 16 more than sand ever did. The closing cadence (5-3-5-3-5) is intact. And the lightly bunkered character—approximately twenty traps across the course—persists, even with the targeted additions on 3 and 18.
Tree management and view corridors have been maintained to preserve the lake-and-mountain outlooks cited in the National Register material; the club’s own hole-by-hole descriptions continue to emphasize those long, downhill lake-facing approaches (e.g., 4 and 5), indicating that the intended visual drama has been kept central to the playing experience.
Overall, the routing and green sites are original, the greens’ full footprints have been largely recovered, bunkering is lightly augmented, and ground-form hazards remain the dominant strategic language. On the evidence available, this is a high-integrity Ross course whose recent restoration chiefly returned lost edges and angles rather than overlaying a new scheme.
Sources & Notes (with disputed points)
1. Club & primary context
Bald Peak Colony Club “About” and hole-by-hole pages (incorporation, ground-breaking context; detailed per-hole features and nomenclature).
2. Opening & early events
Concord Monitor summary of National Register listing (opening August 1, 1921; site context). Concord Monitor
NH DNCR press note on National Register listing (first tournament/exhibition August 5, 1922, Ouimet & Guilford vs. Taylor & Herd).
NH Historical Society photo records identifying the “Battleship” green and the opening exhibition players. nhhistory.org+1
3. Architectural profile & routing characteristics
Top100GolfCourses course profile (five par 5s/five par 3s; lightly bunkered—~20 traps; “Westward Ho” 10th as lone >400-yard par 4; hole features on 5 and 12; state prominence).
4. Restoration scope & surviving Ross features
Jay Flemma, “Forse Design Restores Donald Ross at New Hampshire’s Bald Peak Colony Club” (restoration timing; 2005–06 bunker work; count of original bunkers vs. mounds; 2021 conclusion; specific interventions—widened fairways, green expansions, added internal contours on 2–3 greens; added bunkers on 3 and five on 18; clubhouse-return routing and 5-3-5-3-5 finish).
5. Routing/landforms
GolfClubAtlas, Feature Interview with Ron Forse (stone walls along the routing that were covered/grass-capped; an unusual, site-specific hallmark he cites when discussing Bald Peak).
Disputed/uncertain items
• Co-design attributions: While standard references credit Ross, Top100 notes at least one commentator who has listed George Meredith (a Ross associate) and Thomas Plant as co-designers. The club credits Ross; the National Register materials treat the course as a Ross design within the broader Bald Peak historic district. Given the period’s collaborative construction practices, some staff involvement is plausible, but direct, signed routing plans beyond Ross have not surfaced in accessible public sources.
• “Since 1919” routing language: State preservation communications characterize the routing as essentially unchanged from the club’s earliest years (and some agency summaries refer to 1919 in discussing the club’s development era). That framing is consistent with the 1920 incorporation and the 1921 opening; exact date of Ross’s first on-site staking visit is not independently documented here.