Quartz Mountain State Park

The Quartz Mountains are the lower, western range of the Wichitas, split between Kiowa and Greer counties and made of the same granite. Its granite knobs rise from the lake shore and the farmland, and Baldy Point, about 300 feet above the prairie, is the climbing and rappelling ground. Granite was quarried at Quartz Mountain near the town of Granite, and by the 1930s two quarry companies worked there.

The Civilian Conservation Corps built the park, finished in 1937, as one of Oklahoma's original seven state parks. Lake Altus-Lugert, on the North Fork of the Red River, is the reservoir of the Bureau of Reclamation's Altus irrigation project, completed in the late 1940s. A lodge and golf course followed in the 1950s, and in the 1970s the Oklahoma Arts Institute added a native-stone amphitheater, a performance hall and art studios for its students. Fire destroyed the original lodge in 1995. It reopened in 2001, the park was run by the state Regents for Higher Education for nearly two decades, and Oklahoma State Parks took it back and renovated the lodge after 2020.

The nearest town, Lone Wolf, was founded at the reservation opening of August 1901 and named for the Kiowa chief Lone Wolf, who with his wife and son were the first customers at its first restaurant. The park has nearly 100 primitive and about as many RV sites, cabins, an 18-hole disc golf course and a 400-acre ATV area open April through October.