Dorset Field Club

Overview: Dorset Field Club sits in a valley beneath Vermont’s Green Mountains and traces its identity to a golf course first laid out in 1886. The present 18-hole course combines rolling fairways, mature trees and broad mountain views, but its strongest characteristic is continuity. This is not a modern resort course imposed on the landscape. It is a long-evolving club property whose playing ground has been adjusted and rerouted over generations while retaining the informal scale and rural setting that made Dorset attractive to summer golfers in the first place.

History: The original Dorset Golf Links was established by a group of golfers who spent their summers in Dorset. It began as a nine-hole course with holes crossing roads, hills, swamps, pastures and apple orchards. The course was extended in the late 1890s, a clubhouse was built, and the name changed to Dorset Field Club as the organization expanded beyond golf. Over the following century, five substantial alterations and reroutings shaped the 18-hole course now on the property.

Did You Know? Dorset Field Club is recognized by its own history and Vermont tourism sources as the oldest continuously operating golf course in the United States. The early routing’s informal hole names included Clover Patch and Home Willow Tree, a small detail that captures how different the first Dorset Golf Links was from a modern scorecard.