Golf and Tennis
The land occupied by today’s tennis center was originally cleared for farming in the 1830s. In the late 1800s, hay was grown here to feed the horses required for transporting summer hotel guests. Golf was introduced by two summer residents in 1898, and members of the Waterville Athletic and Improvement Association, which had been formed in 1888 and continues today as the Waterville Valley Athletic and
Improvement Association (WVAIA), began laying out a golf course. Automobile use reduced the need to feed horses, and the former hay field became a golf fairway. By 1900 a nine-hole golf course was complete and the first championships were held for both men and women.
Tennis was being played by 1880 at the site of one of the courts at the base of the hill. Courts were added slowly through the 1960s until the tennis center was developed for the Laver-Emerson Tennis Camps which came to Waterville Valley in 1975. Those camps operated for only a few years, but tennis has now been popular here for close to 150 years.
Behind the southern end of the tennis courts, at the base of the hill and next to Snows Mountain Road, is a grassy plateau now used for croquet. A brook flowing to that spot was dammed to provide a swimming hole until a concrete Olympic-sized community pool opened there in 1950. The brook, only slightly warmer than the cold Mad River, continued to be the water source. The pool was removed in 1985 and the level site which became the current croquet court was created.
Waterville Valley Historical Society
wvhistorybuffs@gmail.com
