News : Plans for Hannen Lake Park

 By Collin Strickland, Park Ranger

Throughout my first full year as Park Ranger at Hannen, I have put a lot of thought into planning future projects for the park. Some projects are ones that can get completed sooner than others. I’ve put together a list of project ideas that I would like to complete.

In the near future, we plan to build a new maintenance facility. This building will house an updated public shower house, an office, and a heated shop that will be used to work and store equipment. This facility has the potential to also be utilized for educational programs and possibly provide shelter during storms.

Another exciting project that we are currently working on is a kayak dock that will make it easier and safer for people getting in and out of their kayaks. This dock would replace the wooden boat dock on the west side of the lake.

This past fall, we cleaned up the pine stand on the east side of the park between the road and lake. This area was once a thick stand of invasive species, such as honeysuckle, autumn olive, and multiflora rose. Using our skid steer with a forestry head attachment we cleared the area of these invasive plants to prevent them from continuing to spread in the park. We thinned the tree stand of dying or dead trees, and planted about 30 new pine trees.

We are also looking into replacing the playground on the east side of the lake. In 2017/18, the playground on the west side of the park by the shelter was replaced. The funds for that playground came from chili cook off events and Community Foundation grants.

During the 2018 camping season the Cedar Cabin at Hannen Lake is usually occupied. Eventually we would like to build additional cabins. A lot of other county conservation boards are building cabins that can accommodate 8-12 people. While these cabins are not cheap to build, they are becoming more and more popular with the public. Since our cabin and shelter reservations system is going online soon, we feel these additional cabins would fill up quickly.

Other projects include re-leveling numerous camping pads, continuing to improve roadways, clearing areas where invasive species are present, enclosing the shelter on the east side of the lake, and upgrading more electric sites to 50AMP.

We will continue to work on converting areas back into native habitat. This will help with the water quality issues we are having with the lake. When we have heavy rains, we have a problem with erosion of sand into the lake from the beach. We are working on a plan to redesign the beach and sidewalk leading down to the beach, utilizing native plants to help slow the water down from the hillside.

-The Nature of Things