Bay Harbor Golf Club

Arthur Hills designed three distinct nine-hole courses — The Links, The Quarry, and The Preserve — that can be combined into three different 18-hole routings along the Lake Michigan shoreline. The Links nine features windswept dunes and bluffs overlooking the lake, while The Quarry nine plays through and around a massive shale quarry with 40-foot gorges, stone cliffs, and natural waterfalls.

Bay Harbor Golf Club in Bay Harbor, Michigan is a 27-hole Arthur Hills design that opened in 1996 on among the extraordinary sites in American golf — a former industrial quarry and cement plant property on the eastern shore of Lake Michigan in Emmet County, where Hills and his collaborator Stephen Kircher transformed a landscape of quarried limestone ledges and scarred industrial ground into a nationally celebrated resort golf destination that Golf Digest ranked third among the Best New Upscale Public Courses of 1999, behind only Bandon Dunes and Whistling Straits. The site's transformation represents one of the largest environmental reclamation projects in United States golf history. The Penn-Dixie cement plant that had operated on the Little Traverse Bay shore for decades left behind the kind of industrial damage — quarried terrain, abandoned infrastructure, contaminated ground — that typically precludes any recreational use. When Boyne Resorts acquired the property in 1994, the demolition of the old cement plant's remaining structures began, and the partnership with Arthur Hills commenced the process of reimagining the scarred quarry landscape as golf terrain. The environmental remediation required before design work could proceed was itself a significant undertaking, and the decision to treat the quarry's geology as a design asset rather than an obstacle to overcome shaped the character of the final product.

Hills designed three nine-hole loops — the Links, the Quarry, and the Preserve — that each occupy distinct terrain on the Bay Harbor property and that combine in pairs to create three uniquely characterized 18-hole experiences. The Links nine plays primarily on a plateau overlooking Lake Michigan, with exposed positions and the prevailing winds off the Great Lakes providing the links-influenced character that the name suggests. The Quarry nine descends into and out of the lakefront stone quarry itself, with the exposed limestone ledges, dramatic elevation changes, and water features of the former quarry creating a playing environment unlike any other course configuration in Michigan. The Preserve nine moves through a more sheltered, wooded landscape on the southern portion of the property, providing a contrasting quieter, forested character to complement the exposed drama of the Links and Quarry nines. Lake Michigan's influence on play at Bay Harbor is constant and unpredictable.

The prevailing westerlies off the lake change direction and intensity through the round, adding wind club selection as an ongoing variable throughout the routing. Several holes play to or alongside the lake itself, where the combination of elevation and water proximity creates the visual drama that has made Bay Harbor among the photographed golf destinations in the Midwest. The stone quarry walls that define the Quarry nine have a geological presence unlike any architectural feature that could be artificially constructed — the layers of limestone that the cement plant's operations exposed over decades of extraction form backdrops and hazards that are entirely natural and entirely unique to this property. The Golf Digest recognition in 1999 placed Bay Harbor in distinguished national company — the year's top three new upscale public courses were Bandon Dunes (Oregon), Whistling Straits (Wisconsin), and Bay Harbor (Michigan), three properties that would each go on to host major professional events and to define the generation of American resort golf construction that characterized the late 1990s. Bay Harbor's ranking in that company confirmed that Hills had produced, on reclaimed industrial ground in Emmet County, a course of genuine national significance.

Boyne Resorts operates Bay Harbor within its northern Michigan portfolio alongside Boyne Highlands and Boyne Mountain, giving the property the operational and marketing infrastructure appropriate to a resort course of its national profile. The Bay Harbor community that surrounds the golf course — including lodging, retail, and dining along Little Traverse Bay — provides the resort context that completes the destination golf experience for the golfers who make the journey to Emmet County specifically to play the former quarry that Arthur Hills converted into one of Michigan's most celebrated courses.