Eagle Nest Lake State Park

The panel's acquisition took years. Charles Springer and his brother Frank applied for the dam in 1907, and their company then spent nine years buying the ground the water would cover; one owner, Mary Gallagher, protested in writing in 1907. Built between 1916 and about 1920, the dam is counted among the largest privately built in the country. The lake stayed private until 2002, when the brothers' descendants' CS Cattle Company closed it to the public and the state bought it; the state park opened on July 3, 2004. The panel spells acquired as aquired.

What the plaque says

Official Scenic Historic Marker Eagle Nest Lake State Park Eagle Nest was a place where members of several Indian tribes were said to have come to collect ceremonial feathers. Before 1919, Charles Springer aquired the land and built a dam for irrigation. It now has a capacity of 78,000 acre feet and provides irrigation for many farmers in eastern New Mexico. Today Eagle Nest State Park is known for its premier trout fishing.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• St. James Hotel — 18 mi
  Henri Lambert's 1872 inn and saloon on the Santa Fe Trail at Cimarron, a stage for the Colfax County War, where the old saloon ceiling still shows 22 bullet holes.
• Taos Pueblo — 19 mi
  Two terraced adobe houses facing each other across Red Willow Creek, lived in for something like a thousand years, with no electricity or running water inside the old walls.
• San Francisco de Asís Church, Ranchos de Taos — 24 mi
  The adobe church at Ranchos de Taos that artists always paint from behind, kept standing by the mud its parish spreads over it every June.

More markers nearby

• Elizabethtown — 1.8 mi
• Wheeler Peak — 3.4 mi
• Vietnam Veterans National Memorial — 7.8 mi
• Palo Flechado Pass — 11 mi