Member Highlight: Warner Lake County Park

Warner Lake County Park is a 241-acre site surrounding the 30 surface acres of Warner Lake, which is located 10 minutes from downtown St. Cloud and about one hour northwest of the Twin Cities. The initial establishment of this site occurred in 1973 when Campfire Girls Inc. donated the 33 acres known as Camp Suima to Stearns County for public recreation purposes.

The maintenance staff constructed new picnic shelters in 2018 and remodeled the Nature Center kitchen in 2020. Warner Lake has a total of 5.5 kilometers of ski trails ranging from easy to more difficult to most difficult. In December 2020, the maintenance staff extended the multi-use trails from 2 kilometers to 5 kilometers in effort to keep walkers and snowshoers off the cross-country ski trails.

Warner Lake County Park also allows hiking, biking, non-profit group camping, fishing, lake access for electric and non-motorized boats, dog play area, open green space, swimming beach, and playground. With the extended multi-use trail, dog sledding and skijoring have become an interest of the park.

Warner Lake County Park offers a variety of unique and critical habitat for wildlife. It provides old growth hardwood forests and roughly 25 acres of restored prairie habitat. There is less than 1% of remaining prairie habitat in Minnesota. This site also contains areas that were once oak savannas, and thus habitat restoration will occur in the future. With Warner Lake’s location, physical features, and outdoor recreation opportunities, the park is regionally significant.

We hope that the spring season will be quick so we can jump into summer and into Warner Lake!

Warner Lake County Park
1485 County Road 143
Clearwater, MN 55320

More is information available at:

• https://www.stearnscountymn.gov/402/Warner-Lake-County-Park
• https://content.civicplus.com/api/assets/0c056b5d-5bc6-428a-980b-fe6a8be5204c