Huntsville State Park is a wooded East Texas park in the Sam Houston National Forest centered on Lake Raven, where the region’s history runs from Bidai Indian habitation and Spanish exploration to the logging boom that transformed the pine woods between about 1880 and 1920. Local efforts in the 1930s secured the land for a state park, and much of its enduring character was created from 1937 to 1942 by Civilian Conservation Corps Company 1823(CV), an African American company of World War I veterans, who built roads, structures, and the dam and spillway for Lake Raven while reforesting logged land. After flood damage delayed completion, the park opened in 1956 and remains both a recreational destination and a preserved New Deal landscape.