Sorry, you need to enable JavaScript to visit this website.
  • Article Image Alt Text

State Park campsites to close for summer

Repairs to washed out culverts at Lake Bob Sandlin State Park begin next week and that means closing off access to the camping area.

While the day use area, including the boat launch, the swimming area, and the fishing pier, will remain open, the 115 overnight camping sites in the state park will be shuttered beginning July 9.

“We will be closed at least until the end of August. It should be fixed by then barring weather,” said Park Superintendent Chris Caswell.

Caswell said the contract for the work was finalized in May but waiting to close the park in July and August was the better option.

“We timed it this way, so it wouldn’t affect business as much. We decided to go after the 4th of July, so we didn’t miss out on Spring Break and the first part of the summer,” he said. “July and August are usually the months that we are not full, and the weather is historically better for working around water.”

Since April of 2017, the park has been dealing with the fallout from heavy rains and relying on the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) to put temporary patches on the culverts.

“We had a freak rain accident when we had seven inches of rain in three hours two Aprils ago. We had two very large culverts, and one completely failed, and one partially collapsed,” Caswell said. “TxDOT has been temporarily shoring those up and kept patching them up every rain we got until we could get a construction project through.”

The project, which will run just under $500,000, will take a few months to complete and hopes are the park will re-open by Labor Day weekend.

When the damage first happened, the park had to close for two weeks through Easter weekend, and another collapse occurred in April of this year.

“The entire road shifted in the area, and we had to have another major temporary repair. We closed for about a week during that time and lost revenue from canceled reservations,” Caswell said. “Through the entire process, we have had to slow traffic down in that area and keep the road repaired and monitored daily.”

Caswell said the previous closures resulted in hundreds of canceled reservations; however, due to the advanced planning for the summertime closure, he only had to cancel one reservation. While the hottest summer months are typically slower months for the park, he estimates the loss of visitation in the thousands.

The park’s staff will be taking advantage of the closure to spruce the park up in anticipation of fall visitors.

“The park hasn’t closed like this in 30 years, so we are going to do some break away from normal duties to concentrate our efforts on projects that are hard to do when the sites are full,” he said. “We will do some cleaning around sites and add a few new amenities.”

The projects include improving some of the campsites by making the pads longer to accommodate larger trailers and enlarging the parking area. They are hoping to be the first Texas state park to add a portable sewage tote dump station closer to the campground.

“Currently people have to tote their sewage to our dump station, which is a mile down the road and pulling a little tote behind your vehicle is a slow and tedious process. This kind of a new idea that is not seen in a lot of parks yet,” Caswell said. “The approval process is well in play, and I think everybody is on board, so we should be able to rill with that pretty quickly.”

The Pittsburg Gazette

112 Quitman
Pittsburg, TX 75686

Phone: 903-856-6629