Maxwelton Braes Golf Course

Maxwelton Braes Golf Course in Baileys Harbor is one of Door County's most historically significant 18-hole tracks, a Joseph R. Roseman design that opened in 1929 and has operated continuously for nearly a century. Roseman is a meaningful Golden Age Midwestern architect credit, and Maxwelton Braes is one of his most-intact surviving designs in Wisconsin. The course was built by Michael McArdle, president of Sunbeam in Chicago and a Baileys Harbor native, who constructed the adjacent lodge as a corporate retreat for Sunbeam executives. The course's name came from the first line of the Scottish song 'Annie Laurie,' which McArdle heard during dinner at the Edgewater Gulf Hotel in Mississippi, a genuine piece of Jazz-Age golf-and-industry history baked into the course's identity. The 6,041-yard par-70 routing features interesting green contours, greenside bunkering, wide fairways, and a mix of short and challenging holes characteristic of Roseman's Golden Age design voice, the course plays shorter than modern championship yardage but the architectural details provide a legitimate playing interest for the architecture-focused golfer. Maxwelton Braes has been preserved as a public course in recent years, paired with the historic lodge as a wedding venue and golf getaway. For the Door County / Baileys Harbor trip visitor, Maxwelton Braes is the Golden Age pedigree round of the peninsula, paired naturally with Cherry Hills Lodge (Sturgeon Bay, 1977) and Peninsula State Park Golf Course for a three-round Door County public package.