Mooween State Park

For four decades, beginning in 1921 and continuing through 1960, the eastern shore of the lake was home to a popular summer retreat for boys: Camp Mooween. All the elements of a classic summer camp dominated the sloping shoreline: dorm buildings, main hall, ball fields, and boathouse. The brainchild of enthusiastic naturalist and inventor Barney Girden, the camp counted among its notable alumni Edwin Land, who later invented the Polaroid camera, and Julius Silver, a key figure in the founding of Brandeis University.

Girden’s 40 years of “graduates” were so closely knit that once the acreage that encompassed the camp became Red Cedar Lake State Park, they rallied to endorse a name befitting their memories. They were convincing enough to have the park renamed in 2000 to retain, at least by name, some of the flavor of their old camp days: hence the designation Mooween State Park.

Today, the concrete footprints of the camp ruins are the only reminders of a past era in this otherwise densely wooded, beautifully set 592-acre park. One of the 20 largest contiguous state parks in the system, this park’s massive 13-acre Red Cedar Lake is a destination for kayaking, stand-up paddleboarding, and four seasons of fishing.

Topography varies from a centrally located hilltop of just over 500 feet to brook valleys in the northern and eastern reaches that dip down 350 feet as they flow off state land.