Sweetwater Lake State Park
NATURE · STATE PARK
Sweetwater Lake State Park
Nature
Sweetwater Lake State Park was proposed in Colorado around the seventy-two-acre Sweetwater Lake and four hundred eighty-eight surrounding acres in the White River National Forest's Flat Tops Wilderness area, about eighteen miles north of Dotsero. It was notable as the first proposed state park in the United States to be created from U.S. Forest Service land. The property, once part of a private ranch and considered for development, was acquired by The Conservation Fund in 2020 and later purchased through a federal Land and Water Conservation Fund grant. Announced in 2021 as Colorado's forty-third state park, it later faced local opposition, and by early 2025 its future pointed more toward a recreation area than a fully established state park.
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Carbonate, Colorado
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