Palisade is the rare lake that was dreamed up before it existed. In the 1870s a Sterling settler named Daniel B. Funk looked at a dry cove at the mouth of Sixmile Canyon and saw a resort — a place where the farm families of Sanpete Valley could come to swim and boat and forget their chores for an afternoon. He bargained with the local San Pitch band for the land, secured a government patent, and then spent years with his family building an earthen dam and digging a canal nearly three-quarters of a mile long to divert Sixmile Creek into the basin. The water rose, and Funk's Lake became one of central Utah's first pleasure resorts.
The name changed when a later owner, a transplant from the Hudson River Palisades in New York, rechristened it for the country he had left behind. Ownership passed through several hands, the crowds came and went, and in 1962 the state took the place over as Palisade State Park.
Today it is one of the most popular parks in the region, sitting almost exactly at the geographic center of Utah. The reservoir is open to paddling, swimming, and fishing — non-motorized craft and electric trolling motors only, which keeps the water quiet — and the shoreline holds a campground and a surprisingly good 18-hole golf course cut into the desert canyon. A trail runs the western bank with long views back across the valley, and from the head of Sixmile Canyon the Arapeen OHV routes climb east toward Skyline Drive on the Manti division of the forest. It is five miles south of Manti and a minute off US-89 — close enough to be easy, central enough to feel like the middle of everywhere.
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