The Kahkwa Club

The Kahkwa Club traces to 1893, founded as a social and boating club on Presque Isle Bay — its name is Seneca for 'lion,' and boating and 'aquatic sports' were the original point. Golf came in 1899 with a nine-hole course built by the newly formed Erie Golf Association; the club moved to its present Swanville site in 1912 and brought in Donald Ross to lay out the new eighteen, with construction starting in 1916 and the first nine opening in 1918.

That Ross routing is still the course today, restored in 1999 by Ron Forse and refined again by Kris Spence in 2023. It has hosted three USGA championships, most notably the 1971 U.S. Women's Open, and Golfweek ranked it among Pennsylvania's top ten as recently as 2023 — a rare case of an 1890s social and boating club and a Donald Ross design still sharing the very same property, unchanged, more than a century later.