Guilford Lakes Golf Course

Guilford Lakes Golf Course began in 1928 as a two-hole pitch-and-putt laid out by Karl Schmidt on land along North Madison Road. In the 1930s Gardner Wheeler, a 16-year-old student at New Haven's Hillhouse High School, won permission from the owner, the Guilford Lakes Estates neighborhood association, to build a nine-hole course on the 14-acre property, and with one hired laborer he cleared rocks and shaped the fairways; the clubhouse became a gathering place for summer residents. The course slipped into disrepair in the early 1980s, and in the mid-1980s the Town of Guilford bought it as part of its Timberlands property. When efforts to lease it failed, the town closed the course in 1989. In July 1996 voters approved a $725,000 bond to rebuild it; architect Al Zikorus died during the project, and his son Michael Zikorus completed the work. The rebuilt par-3 nine reopened on July 28, 1999.