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Mirror Lake State Park

This park is named for its centerpiece, a lake which often is so calm that not a ripple marks its surface. The lake reflects a wooded shoreline with cliffs up to 50 feet high, a swimming beach, and wetlands that are home to a variety of wildlife.

Just three miles from Wisconsin Dells, Mirror Lake State Park also has three picnic areas (one with a shelter and all with grills); wooded campsites; bike, boat, canoe, and kayak rentals; a cabin for people with disabilities; and a cottage designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. Only slow, no-wake boating is allowed.

The park’s 2,200 acres have 20.4 miles of trails including...

28.4 miles of hiking trails

17.4 miles of cross-country ski trails

9.2 miles of off-road bike trails

1.2 miles of trails for snowshoeing

1.1 miles of interpretive nature trails:

0.5 mile of trail accessible for people with disabilities

How to Get There

Mirror Lake State Park is conveniently located near Interstate Highway 90-94. Exit I-90-94 to U.S. Highway 12 south of Wisconsin Dells. Go south on Highway 12 about .5 mile to Fern Dell Road. Turn west (right) on Fern Dell Road and go about 1.5 miles. The park entrance will be on your right.

Source: WDNR

Fishing at Mirror Lake State Park

Both Mirror Lake and Dell Creek offer fishing opportunities.

Dell Creek

Dell Creek is 10.5 miles long and flows into Mirror Lake. It has cool water and adequate hiding cover for trout, but with no spawning gravel, the fishery is depended on stocking. The stream typically is stocked with 5,000 fall fingerlings (6 inches long) and 3,000 spring yearlings (8 inches long) each year. Most are brown trout.

Mirror Lake

Mirror Lake is a 137-acre impoundment of Dell Creek. The lake has two shallow, weedy bays; the rest of the lake occupies a narrow, sandstone bluff gorge with water depths of 10 to 14 feet.

The lake has largemouth bass, bluegills, northern pike, yellow perch, black crappie, pumpkinseeds, yellow and black bullheads, and walleyes.

There’s a wheelchair-accessible fishing pier just north of the boat landing. Boating in the lake is slow, no-wake only.

Picnic and Play Areas

Mirror Lake State Park has three designated picnic area with 76 tables and charcoal grills. There’s an accessible, open, non-reservable picnic shelter in the Bluewater Bay camping area near the new shower/flush toilet building. The shelter has electricity and drinking water and can hold 40 people.

The park concession stand near the boat launch sells soda, ice, and firewood and rents boats and bicycles. Other picnic supplies are available from merchants in nearby Lake Delton, Baraboo, and Wisconsin Dells.

The park has three sets of play equipment, two at the beach/picnic area and one near the shelter in Blue Water Bay.

Camping at Mirror Lake State Park

Mirror Lake has 151 family campsites in three separate campgorunds, plus seven group sites. The park also has an accessible cabin for people with disabilities and a rental cottage that was designed by famed architect Frank Lloyd Wright.

Family campgrounds

Bluewater Bay Campground, the nearest to the park visitor center and amphitheater, has 63 sites in four loops. It has a shelter, showers, and both flush and pit toilets. A hiking trail connects the campground with the beach area.

Sandstone campground has 68 sites, including four walk-in sites and one site that’s accessible for people with disabilitie. There are showers and both flush and pit toilets. It’s near the boat landing, fishing pier, and beach. [How many?] of the sites have electrical hookups.

Cliffwood campground has 35 reservable sites, [??] of them with electricity. One of the sites is accessible for people with disabities.

Group Campsites

The seven group sites, each accommodating 20 campers, are near Bluewater Bay campground. They’re tent-only sites (no vehicles on the sites, but there are parking lots nearby). Water and pit toilets are available in the campground.

Accessible Cabin

Mirror Lake’s accessible “Cabin in the Woods” was the first such cabin in the Wisconsin State Park System. It was built by volunteers from the Telephone Pioneers of America in 1991. More...

Seth Peterson Cottage

The Seth Peterson Cottage is the only Frank Lloyd Wright-designed house in the world available for rental occupancy.

Designed in 1958, it was one of Wright’s last commissions. Seth Peterson was a Wisconsin native with a lifelong interest in Wright in his work. He convinced the 90-year-old Wright to design the cottage. Peterson died before the cottage was finished, so later owners completed it.

The Department of Natural Resources acquired the property in 1966 to add to the state park. Due to the remote location and lack of regular use, the cottage fell victim to neglect and the ravages of nature.

In 1989 concerned Mirror Lake residents and Wright devotees founded a nonprofit organization to save and retore the cottage and give it a new and useful life. After a $300,000 restoration project, the cottage was open for rent through Sand County Services, Box 409 Lake Delton WI 53940, phone (608) 254-6551 or fax (608) 254-4440.

It also is open for public tours the second Sunday of each month from 1 to 4 p.m. Admission is $2 per person. Tours of 10 or more should call (608) 254-6051.

For more information about Mirror Lake State Park, ask Paul Zajackowski , property supervisor, (608) 254-2333.

Mirror Lake Pine Oak Forest

State Natural Area (No. 406)

Location: Within Mirror Lake State Park, Sauk County. T13N-R6E, Sections 29, 30, 31.

Access: From the intersection of I-90/94 and State Highway 12 in Wisconsin Dells, go west on 12 0.5 mile, then west on Fern Dell Road 1.5 miles to the park entrance. Get a park map at the contact station. The natural area is situated in the northwest corner of the park.

Mirror Lake Pine Oak Forest features a mature dry-mesic forest dominated by white pine and oaks, with dry sandstone cliffs, alder thicket, and scattered vernal ponds. The gently undulating sandy uplands west of Mirror Lake support the forest, which is dominated by white pine, white oak, red oak, and black oak. Red pine is co-dominant above the sandstone cliffs flanking the lake and is locally present elsewhere. The sapling layer is composed primarily of white pine, red maple, and a few scattered white oaks.

Huckleberry dominates the shrub layer with American hazelnut occurring at various locations. Other characteristic low shrubs and herbs include early low blueberry, swamp dewberry, pipsissewa, creeping snowberry, wintergreen, princess’-pine, spinulose wood fern, narrow-leaved loosestrife, sessile-leaved bellwort, long-awned wood grass, and maidenhair fern. Locally, there are pockets of moister, somewhat richer forest in which red maple is an important component of the forest.

The groundlayer contains enchanter’s nightshade, wild sarsaparilla, and Jack-in-the-pulpit. An extensive shrub swamp dominated by speckled alder borders a small perennial tributary of Dell Creek. Characteristic flora includes skunk cabbage, marsh marigold, orange jewelweed, blue marsh violet, American golden saxifrage, and rough bedstraw. Also present is the rare bog bluegrass (Poa palustris). Numerous seepages occur along the tiny, clear, sandy-bottomed stream.

Several short, cliff-enclosed dry ravines open to Mirror Lake with vertical rock exposures of nearly 12 meters in height. Nearer to Mirror Lake, red pine becomes more important as a canopy species.

Bird life includes ruffed grouse, American woodcock, gray catbird, pileated woodpecker, barred owl, tufted titmouse, pine warbler, brown creeper and the state-threatened cerulean warbler (Dendroica cerulea). Mirror Lake Pine Oak Forest is owned by the DNR and was designated a State Natural Area in 2003.

Source: WDNR