Beaver Dam State Park
Emmy was very proud to carry her stick around the lake loop trail. Photo by Jordan Goebig.
Beaver Dam State Park, located in Carlinville, Ill. is a family-friendly location, with year-round camping, numerous picnic sites, fishing, and several shorter trail systems. If you’re looking for a cheap overnight spot, or need to stretch your legs on your way to St. Louis, this is an ideal location.
Trail Conditions
.5 - 5ish miles
The website boasts 8 miles of trails, but we had to do a lot of looping and re-tracing steps to get to that high number.
The lake loop (about 1.8 miles) is a lovely trail that winds right next to the water, but at a high enough elevation that it wasn’t muddy at all. It’s a pretty trail, but short enough for families with kids to manage.
The internal park trails bring you through the camping area and into the forest. There is a section near the marsh that can get very muddy, but the overall trail system was well-managed and free of debris/mud puddles.
The trails are technically marked, but I would recommend downloading the map pdf. before you get into the park (very limited cell phone service). Trail markers can be hard-to-see, and we noted only one trail map at a kiosk location.
Things We Love
Even on a cold January morning, we experienced lots of wildlife. There was an abundance of birds (including blue herons and owls!!), deer, and the markings of beavers.
As stated above, we really did enjoy the lake loop. Even if you’re a novice hiker, there are stops for resting along the route as well.
Since it’s in a more rural county, we had the entire park to ourselves for almost the entire 5 hours we wandered around. Other than a few early fisher-folk, there was nobody on the trails the entire time we walked them.
Things to Know
Our personal opinion is this park is probably at its peak prettiest when you’re visiting at the height of a season. We were hoping for snow on the ground when we planned this in January, but it’s far enough south that it was mostly just shades of browns and reds. Still a beautiful park, but not as transformative an experience as it could have been.
A lot of the trails are centralized around bodies of water, so I imagine in the summertime it can get buggy. There were also lots of signs posted about insects, so spray up if you’re visiting during the spring/summer!
The campground was large - with sections for RV’s, tents, and even a rentable cabin. It is open year-round, and it does have showers and running water (year-round). The other vault toilets around the park were not open, but the campground facilities were open.