Mooween State Park

Once the site of a popular boys’ summer camp, today, the park offers something for everyone. It’s one of the 20 largest contiguous state parks in the system, and the park’s massive 13-acre Red Cedar Lake dominates its landscape and is a destination for kayaking, stand-up paddleboarding, and four seasons of fishing. Those venturing out beyond the lake will not be disappointed, whether you want to scratch your itch for adventure in the extensive mountain biking network, hunt, or explore the remains of Camp Mooween. The old road to the former camp is now a well-defined forested path that leads into the depths of the 592-acre park.

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.

From Camp Mooween to 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 park.