fort parker state park

Checking in was great with a friendly staff although they were busy. We had a pretty significant problem with our camper but with the help of a park ranger we were able to fix it at no cost. I only wish we had gotten his name to thank him personally. RV campsites were small & a little too close for our taste with no sewer hookups. Since we were gone most of the time visiting nearby historical sites we were ok with it. Very nice fishing piers & good trails. Onsite historical cemetery. The actual fort is several miles down the road & a nice visit. Confederate Reunion Grounds is in the opposite direction but is under construction & has very little to offer at this time other than picnicking & possible rental of a large pavilion. May want to check their site to see when construction is complete. Eat at the Farm House Restaurant in Mexia if you get a chance. Awesome food.

We decided to come here to see what us was all about. We ended up hiking 3 miles and loving every moment. It has bit and pieces that remember us of many other state parks around the state, such as Hill Country, Pine trees and the plains area. Highly recommend that you go visit.

Nice small park with a bunch of trails. Loved all the white pelicans swimming in the lake! Too bad they wouldn't come up closer for a good picture. Really good pavilion and meeting room for reunions. Very good fishing in this lake. Nice playgrounds and good camping sites as well as shelters. Water/electric sites all have a picnic table and firepit. Some of the sites are much deeper than others and some have far more privacy than others. Get there early to have your pick. Bathrooms are very old. Not the cleanest but usable. This is such a small park that there are only two showers for men and two for women. There are no private dressing areas or hooks in showers to hold any of your belongings. (This park stays full so, on weekends, if you just need the restroom and not shower, it's very easy to walk up to the pavilion and use the facilities there. Never crowded.) Lighted fishing dock but also good fishing from shore. Good boat dock, boat and canoe launch (you can rent canoes), and fishing pier in public area. The public area is really beautiful, lots of picnic spots, nice swimming beach and playgrounds as well as plenty of bathrooms. Lots of walking trails with various degrees of difficulty; however, the Nature Trail is NOT handicap accessible (as advertised). The Ranger's Station does not have any firewood or ice so bring your own. Former site of Springfield but all that's left is a really interesting cemetery that is inside the park. Down the road is the rebuilt Fort Parker (famous for Cynthia Parker's abduction by the Indians). Fascinating story there. Also close by are the Confederate Reenactment Grounds that have a courting trail that you can walk and a good canoe launch where you can paddle back to the State Park.Be sure and go into the Ranger's Station and/or the Nature Center (open on Saturdays) because they have some of the best handouts we have seen. Very nice State Park directories (with maps) and lots of good information about their area. The Nature Center is interesting and has a nice kids' area where they can feel the animal pelts and make different animal tracks in sand. The park rangers here are quite active. Every time you look up, you see them; however, they didn't seem to be overbearing. We had a really nice stay at this park. Our only two criticisms were that you cannot see the lake from the campsites because they have allowed brush to grow up and take over. It could have been so beautiful! You have to use the public area to enjoy the water. Also, the bathrooms are really old and shower accommodations are inadequate but it wouldn't keep us from going again. We LOVE Farm House restaurant in Mexia (only six miles from park). They had the best catfish we have ever had. They make a wonderful chicken friend steak (good chicken) and awesome quail kabobs (lots of quail, squash, onion and bell pepper).

We had about 15 Scouts and 7 adults stay in the Scout Primitive group area and it was a great time. I have read that the individual primitive sites are a little close but the group primitive area is excellent.Plenty of room to separate the scouts from adults, fire pits, picnic tables. We dropped off a group at the boat dock and they fished and canoed their way across the lae and up the river to the boat ramp that is near the group site. they ate lunch and then a group made the trek back to return the canoes. There are also several nice hiking trails.The ranger team is terrific and helpful, we saw a program on bats at the activity center (seasonal) and the rangers loaned us a "bird bag" that had lots of info on the local bird population. A group of us made it over to "Old Fort Parker" across from the lake, if you are interested in history, it is a nice diversion (it is relatively small but very interesting and only $2).Overall, this is a park we will be back to! Thank you Ranger Tom!

This is a fantastic place to go swimming in the summer! Fishing, boating, picnicking and sports. Have always loved this place!

Although I was a day -time visitor, I really enjoyed this park. It was quiet and peaceful and the well-maintained camping areas were very pretty. The Navasota River runs along the park and the large lake looks like it would be great to fish, swim or canoe across. A stop at the ranger station is a must to pay the small fee and learn about the park activities from the very friendly ranger staff. You can rent canoes and I was told that they would shuttle you up to the Confederate Reunion Grounds park if you wanted to canoe down the river and back to the State Park boat dock. The park has a nice small nature center and museum and the volunteers there can tell you all about the history of the park and will suggest other state parks you might enjoy as well. I took a picnic lunch and enjoyed sitting near the lake and relaxing. A great stop for camping, hiking, fishing, swimming and canoeing or just sitting by the lake.

Near the small town of Mexia is one of the State's most accommodating State Parks. My brother and his adult children spent a long weekend at Fort Parker. He asked if I'd be interested in driving down from Dallas to visit. His family lives in Austin and so I readily agreed. Fort Parker staff were very nice and the modest $2 fee was a pleasant surprise. We sat around the camp talking and sharing stories of our childhoods. The younger children and their parents fished both off of the dock and off of a canoe. They played games and just had an overall great time. The park was remarkably quiet, the weather very pleasant and the company wonderful. We had to leave before park closure because we weren't camping, but I would definitely consider Fort Parker for a family reunion, overnight camping or any other fun family type of outing.

We love this state park. I have a preteen son who pretends he is not impressed with anything, but he loved the presentation about bats. He rode his bike all over the place. There is an old cemetary at this park and it is worth walking around and paying your respects; it's wooded, peaceful and well maintained. There are cabins, RV spots, shelters, tent camping spots and a nice day use area. There's a visitor's activity area, a group building, a pavilion with electricity. It is heavily wooded here and really pretty. It would be easy to launch your canoe or kayak at the ramp and explore the quiet, smooth sloughs. This is one of our favorite state parks to visit so far and we will definitely be back. It is very accessible from the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex!

Nice place to camp with walking trails, playground, canoe - kayak - paddle boat rentals, swimming area, and fishing piers.

This well wooded area on Lake Mexia is one of the nicest parks I have seen. Not far from the Old Fort Parker, this has a historical graveyard and some remnants of the early Texas pioneers.The British lady park ranger could not have been nicer.

We were the only two people in the place which made it nice. We could take our time without feeling rushed in the least. The only thing I didn't like was the chicken wire cages you had to stand in while inside the cabins. It made it impossible to take good pictures and had there been a crowd that day, only 2-3 people could have been able to see inside at the same time. It also would have been nice to have had some sort of 'costumed guide' we could have asked questions of. Still - we had fun and learned something new!

I was driving from Fort Worth to Houston and took a detour here to break up the drive since it only added about 20 miles to the trip. If you are in the area passing by it's a good place to stop but it's not the type of place I would recommend as a destination on its own. I arrived on a Saturday morning the day after it snowed so there was still snow and ice in various places throughout the park which led to some interesting pictures. I had studied the map watched a video about the park that Texas Parks and Wildlife has on youtube and planned on doing the Baines Creek Trail since it was rated as the most strenuous in the park. I drove in and parked by the cemetary thinking that I could access the Baines Creek Trail from there on a long hike but found out that is wrong. The video by Texas Parks and Wildlife clearly shows someone walking across the dam and has a man interviewed talking about walking on the dam but in reality you are not allowed to walk on the dam and there are signs everywhere stating this fact. The reason I state this is that the Baines Creek Trail is not connected to the main entrance of the park in any type of size, shape, form, or fashion. To get to the Baines Creek Trail you have to continue driving down the road a couple miles and turn off a side road where you cross an old iron bridge and there is a small parking area specifically for that trail, that is the only access point, the only other choice is to walk along the road to get there... Once I finally found the Baines Creek Trail I walked it and thought it was not at all strenuous, I didn't notice any elevation gain/loss, it's basically no harder to do than any nature trail. Since it was below freezing outside I never saw another person and it was very peaceful but the trail is short (5 miles round trip) and can be done in around 1.5 hours walking pace. Luckily I had walked around the trails by the cemetary beforehand or else it would have been a quick trip. It is probably a nice trail to walk in the summer months since there should be good tree cover to provide shade.

We only had a couple of hours to explore, but thoroughly enjoyed the trails we sampled. The park includes a small lake and we found a good vantage point in the early evening to watch the sun set over the lake. We plan to return when we have more time.

I'm basing this review on this particular weekend experience. I would imagine other times of the year could be a whole different story. The weather was perfect, yet the campground was only 25% full. We stayed in the primitive area and there was only one other family there.. We got site 49. It's the largest tent site, and on the end, so probably also the most secluded. Some of the primitive sites were right on top of each other and too small to hold 2 large tents. We lucked out.. ... Or did we... :-) There was a swamp directly behind us. In the summer I would imagine the mosquitos would be horrible, but in February it was just beautiful. The wildlife in the forest behind us was very active during the night. This kept us entertained and curious as to what animals were out there making all that racket. We decided to get brave, got our flashlights and went for a night time walk. I'm pretty sure it was wild hogs rustling around, and buzzards flapping their wings. But it was too dark to tell for sure. Such a fun adventure!!! After driving around and checking the place out a bit, we decided that we had really lucked out. The more expensive campsites in the electric/water area had no privacy at all between sites, and no wind blocks. This probably wouldn't matter as much if you are in an RV, but for tent campers, it seemed a little to open. Something that struck me as odd were the private homes on one side of the park road and the campgrounds on the other, but it didn't seem to be an issue. We loved it that there was a separate Boy Scout camping area. A great idea for both the scouts and the other campers. :-) We only used the primitive bathroom facilities. It was very clean and didn't smell like most privies tend to. Again, this was in February. Summer might be a different story. This is Texas, after all. The only water in the primitive camping area is situated between 2 campsites. I wish we would have brought a 2 gallon jug to use at our site, but it wasn't too bad. If people had been camped in those 2 sites, I would have hated to keep bothering them. The entire campground was very clean. The trails were well marked and in good shape. The facilities all seemed to be kept up very well. It was over all a very lovely park! We saw (and heard) such a variety of birds. I'm not really a birder, but this place makes me wish that I were! In the evenings all the buzzards would fly in to their roosts for the night. Thousands of birds who apparently spent the night in the reeds around the lake would fly in right before sunset and leave out early in the morning. It was beautiful to watch. We also had cardinals, bluebirds, woodpeckers, a hoot owl, cranes and hawks flying over and entertaining us. Those are just the ones we could identify. For such a quiet place, it sure was loud at night! If you are a tent camper, consider ear plugs. :--) The owl hooting, bull frogs croaking, coyotes howling, fish jumping, buzzard wings flapping and woodland creature rustlings carried on until sunrise. It was VERY cool! Much better than hearing traffic sounds! Last but not least, the park attendants who worked in the front office were amazing. They were friendly, helpful, informative, and welcoming. They seemed to really want us to enjoy their park. Julia greeted us, asked us about our needs/preferences and helped us pick out the perfect spot. When she found out it was our first visit, she gave us all sorts of information that was interesting to us. Before we left, we stopped in again to ask a couple of questions. Julia and another very helpful lady answered all our questions, we had a few laughs and they sincerely invited us to come again. While we saw other employee presence in the park, these were the only two we interacted with. It was a great experience as far as state park camping goes! There is a lot of history in the area if you are into that sort of thing. We were here for some geocaching and hiking. It's a great location for both. We are planning on coming back to do some canoeing this spring.

We decided to camp here with our 7 year old nephew one weekend in early November without a reservation. They were full except for primitive and turned away several people just in the time we were checking in on Friday afternoon. We managed with the primitive camping in our tent. However, the campsites are so close together that you hear the conversations from the surrounding campers quite clearly. Two young couple two sites down were apparently chopping firewood (it was chilly) almost the whole time we were there and the constant banging was annoying. At one point, I thought they even turned on a chainsaw but it could have been a loud generator or some other kind of machinery. My irritated husband yelled at them to be quiet late one night and they finally did. The hiking trails are nice but there is evidence of javelinas everywhere so I wouldn't let children wander alone. We especially liked the trail to the lookout point. You have to drive outside the park to the other side of the dam to the starting point. Make sure you go see the dam. We also kayaked on the river. It was very muddy from the recent rains. The lake was too choppy from the wind to kayak but the day we left it looked like glass. There is a great nature center with a touch and feel section for kids and a photographical history of the CCC and TX parks. They had an evening program on creatures of the night but we didn't attend. There is a primitive restroom in the primitive camping area or you can drive to the main park area for more modern facilities. This park is very pretty....it is too bad all the campsites are squeezed so close together. A few miles down the road is the reconstruction of Ft. Parker. It requires a separate small admission but it is well worth the time and $2 adults/$1 children.