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Heading To A State Park? Call Ahead.

Texas Parks and Wildlife

If you’re headed to a Texas state park, be sure to call ahead. Many of the state’s favorite parks have been full this year – and some are still closed due to flooding. 

Texas Parks and Wildlife officials say if you plan to spend the night – call for reservations. Special Assistant Director of State Parks Kevin Good says attendance is up quite a bit over last year.

“The latest data that we have runs attendance through May and at that point, we were up about 12 percent,” he says.

Good says some of the attendance is expected to drop off after July 4th, but some of the most popular parks in Central Texas are turning away visitors, such as Balmorhea, Pedernales Falls, Blanco and Guadalupe River. Others are still closed because of flooding earlier this year. 

“Stephen F. Austin, Lake Somerville, and a couple of others that have been impacted by high waters. Typically those are lake parks, but in the case of Stephen F. Austin which is on the Brazos River, that one is just affected by the high river levels,” he says.

Good says parts of Bastrop State Park are open, but other parts are still closed due to the recent floods, where damage was exacerbated by the damage left by the wildfire. 

If you’re heading out, check the TPWD website for specific parks – if you’re just doing a day visit, go early – and you can check the “Parks Alert” pages on the website. 

Eileen Pace is a veteran radio and print journalist with a long history of investigative and feature reporting in San Antonio and Houston, earning more than 50 awards for investigative reporting, documentaries, long-form series, features, sports stories, outstanding anchoring and best use of sound.