Lake Anna State Park
Virginia State Park On Lake Anna, Impounded In 1972; Includes The Nineteenth Century Goodwin Gold Mine Site On The Virginia Gold Pyrite Belt · Spotsylvania, Virginia
Twenty-eight hundred acres of Piedmont woodland on the shore of a thirteen-thousand-acre lake that exists for an unusual reason: it was created in 1972 to cool the North Anna nuclear station, and the power company flooded the valley of the North Anna River to do it. What the water covered was gold country. This part of Virginia sat on the Gold-Pyrite Belt and the Goodwin Gold Mine worked here in the nineteenth century, which is why the single most distinctive thing about this park is that rangers will hand you a pan and teach you to use it in the creek, and people do find flakes. The mine ruins and the interpretive trail are still up in the woods behind the beach. The rest is a well-run lake park - a sand swimming beach, a public boat ramp onto a lake otherwise thick with private docks, cabins, camping, thirteen miles of trail and a visitor centre - but the gold is the reason this row is not interchangeable with the other lake parks in this batch.
6800 Lawyers Road, Spotsylvania, Virginia, 22551, United States
Park open daily, generally 8 AM to dusk with shorter winter gate hours. Swimming beach, bath house, boat rental and camp store are SEASONAL, mainly June to August. Gold panning runs as a ranger programme on a published schedule, mostly in the warmer months, with limited places - book ahead. Cabins and camping by reservation. Parking fee per vehicle, separate launch fee per boat, separate seasonal beach charge.
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