Devils Lake State Park was founded in 1911 in Baraboo, Wisconsin. Today the park sees about 3 million visitors per year. The park surrounds Devils lake and contains 9,217 acres of beautiful Wisconsin nature. It is known particularly for the quartz bluffs along the lake as well as the Balanced Rock and Devils Doorway. The park boasts some of best hiking in all of Wisconsin!
Native American effigy mounds are located throughout the cart for people to visit. For those wanting to hike the famous Ice Age Trail through Wisconsin, Devils Lake State Park contains about 11 miles of the 1,200 mile trail. The park itself was created and shaped by previous glaciers in the area.
Park activities available include swimming, hiking, biking, rock climbing, bouldering, boating, canoeing, kayaking, bird watching, fishing, hunting, scuba diving, skiing, snowshoeing, sledding and more! For those wanting to hike the park offers over 29 miles of trails including part of the National Ice Age Trail. The other trails include the Balanced Rock Trail, CCC Trail, Devil's Doorway Trail, East Bluff Trail, East Bluff Woods Trail, Grottos Trail, Group Camp Trail, Johnson Moraine Trail, Potholes Trail, Roznos Meadow Trail, Sauk Point Trail, Steinke Basin Loop trail, Tumbled Rocks Trail, Uplands Trail, and West Bluff Trail. These trails vary in not only difficulty but time as well.
One of the most unique parts about this park is it's Nature Center. The nature center provides a variety of entertaining and educational programs for kids and adults alike. Some of these programs include archery programs, Looking for Bigfoot, Monarch Tagging, Snowshoe Hikes, Astronomy Nights, Volunteer Work, Tracking Bats, Ropes Rescue, Learning to Ice Fish, and Spring Mud Hikes. Most of these events must be scheduled and reserved ahead of time, but guests also pop into the nature center to see it's three dimensional land form model of the park, hands on items like shells & furs, and historical photographs of the area. Its a particularly good place to visit for family fun. The Nature Center is from 9 am to 4 pm everyday from Memorial Day to Labor Day. The other part of the year the center is open sporadically and guests are encouraged to call ahead of time to see if the center will be open for their visit.
