Town Rankings / Maine
The Best Golf Courses in Bar Harbor
Kebo Valley has been played since 1888, which makes it Maine's oldest club, and it sits in the shadow of Cadillac Mountain on Mount Desert Island, where Acadia's granite meets the Atlantic. Golf arrived here with the summer colony, the era when wealthy families built cottages the size of hotels and presidents came to Maine to be seen being simple. Taft played this circuit. Other presidents followed. The courses were part of the social furniture of a vanished America, except that on this island, unusually, the furniture survived.
Mount Desert Island golf is seasonal, small scale and unhurried. The season is short, the clubs are modest next to the landscape, and the landscape wins every argument. Our ranking rewards the golf first, then the day, and on this island the day is dominated by one fact: you are playing some of the oldest golf in New England with a national park for a backdrop.
1Kebo Valley Golf Club
Kebo Valley's claim starts with the date, 1888, and the standing that comes with it: Maine's oldest club, still going, in a town that could have turned its whole shoreline into something else. Longevity alone does not win rankings, but Kebo backs the date with position. The course plays under Cadillac Mountain, with Acadia's granite as the constant presence over the round, and the golf has the compact, ground level character of its era, a course from the game's first American generation rather than a modern construction wearing a vintage costume.
The presidential thread is real color here, not decoration. Taft and other presidents played the summer colony circuit on this island, and Kebo was its center. Walking fairways that have hosted that parade, in a setting this unchanged, is a round that doubles as a piece of living history, a phrase we use sparingly and mean here literally: the club has been operating since 1888.
The concession is scale. Golf from 1888 was built for shorter hitters and softer equipment, and Kebo cannot examine the modern power game the way a contemporary championship course can. Long players will overpower parts of it. If your ranking values the test above everything, that matters. Ours values the whole round, and no course in Maine gives you this combination of age, setting and continuity. First, and not particularly argued about locally.
2Northeast Harbor Golf Club
Across the island in Northeast Harbor, the summer colony's quieter harbor, sits the island's second act. Northeast Harbor Golf Club serves the village that always preferred understatement, the summer people who came to Mount Desert to escape attention rather than attract it. The golf matches the village: smaller in profile than Kebo, private in feel, a club round rather than a destination round.
It finishes second because Kebo's combination of age and setting is unmatchable on this island, and because Northeast Harbor's appeal is deliberately inward facing. This is a course content to be exactly what its members want, which is a virtue for them and a limit for a ranking.
Concede the counterpoint, though: plenty of island golfers will tell you the Northeast Harbor round is the more pleasant afternoon, less visited, less freighted with history, just golf in a beautiful harbor village. On a members' ranking of days rather than courses, it might well win. On ours, history and setting carry the day for Kebo, but the gap is narrower than the reputations suggest.
3Causeway Club (Southwest Harbor)
The Causeway Club, over in Southwest Harbor on the island's quiet side, rounds out an island bench of three, and the drive alone tells you its role. Southwest Harbor is the working harbor, lobster boats over yachts, and its club golf has that same unpretentious register. This is local golf for the island's year round and summer residents, played without ceremony.
Third here is a function of company, not quality of experience. The Causeway gives up historical weight to Kebo and polish to Northeast Harbor, and it plays the simplest golf of the three. Its defense is honesty: not every club needs to be a destination, and an island with three courses needs one that belongs entirely to its own people.
Taken together, the three courses map the island itself: the famous old club under the mountain, the quiet colony course, the working harbor's local game. Play Kebo for Maine golf history at its source, then drive the island and play the other two to understand where that history lived. The season is short and the light goes fast over Cadillac, which is exactly why a round here in late September feels like borrowing time.