**To keep up to date with any park changes, alerts and to plan your MISSOURI STATE PARK GETAWAY go to the official Missouri State Park website by clicking HERE.**
Western Ste. Genevieve County contains some of the loveliest vistas in the state, and Hawn State Park offers visitors one of the best places to experience this diverse natural landscape. When schoolteacher Helen Coffer Hawn willed the state 1,459 acres of majestic hills and crystal streams in 1952, her gift became the centerpiece of one of the most outstanding recreational jewels of the state park system.
FOREST
The park features an unusual landscape with canyon-rimmed valleys, clear sand-bottom streams and a mixed oak-pine forest. In places, the oak-pine forest gives way to pure stands of mature shortleaf pine – Missouri’s only native pine species. In addition, Hawn State Park preserves one of Missouri’s best examples of the distinctive Lamotte Sandstone – a very old, coarse-grained sandstone overlying ancient igneous bedrock. The sandstone’s unique ability to hold groundwater produces a variety of distinctive flowers and plants.
HIKING
The park contains some of the finest hiking trails in the state. Hikers on Whispering Pine Trail can explore many of the park’s features as they wander through forests and along streams. The trail, built in cooperation with the Ozark Chapter of the Sierra Club, consists of two loops leading toward the River Aux Vases. A shorter trail starts at the picnic grounds and leads to the scenic shut-ins at Pickle Creek. There are three primitive backpacking camps along the trail. White Oak trail offers a medium length hike that travels through mixed hardwood and pine forest, across creeks and over sandstone outcrops. Several connector trails join the White Oaks and Whispering Pine trails enabling visitors to extend or shorten their hiking trip.
CAMPING
The park features a campground with electric and basic sites, as well as modern restrooms, hot showers, laundry facilities, a dumping station and playground equipment. Pickle Creek flows along the edge of the campground offering colorful displays of flowering dogwood in the spring. To relax with an afternoon picnic, visitors can choose from many picnic sites nestled under the pine trees, and the open picnic shelter can be reserved at the park office.
During the summer months, a seasonal naturalist provides nature walks and evening programs, but the park has a great deal to offer in any season. In winter, the pines provide a splash of color against the freshly fallen snow; in autumn, the forest is ablaze with gold and red leaves; and in spring, flowering dogwood and redbud mingle with the delicate pink and white flowers of the wild azaleas.
PARK HOURS & FEES
Contact Park
PARK PHONE
573-883-3603
PARK ADDRESS
12096 Park Drive
Ste. Genevieve, MO 63670-8121
For more information click HERE.
Have you visited this state park? If so, please leave a comment. Thanks
BREATHE LIFE!
Leave a Reply