Crawford State Park
🏆🏆🏆🏆🏆 Kansas — Home to the only natural Ozark lake in Kansas — 150-acre lake with limestone bluffs in the Ozark Plateau of southeast Kansas! Excellent crappie and bass fishing. Geologically unique — the western edge of the Ozark Plateau.
Visitor Information
| Detail | Info |
|---|---|
| Location | Kansas |
About Crawford
Crawford State Park in Crawford County sits on a 150-acre lake in the Ozark Plateau of southeastern Kansas — the state’s most geologically diverse corner. Crawford County was the center of Kansas’s coal mining industry in the early 1900s, attracting Italian, Croatian, and Mexican immigrants. The “Little Balkans” cultural heritage survives in the region’s cuisine, festivals, and architecture.
Things to Do
Swimming, fishing for bass and channel catfish, camping, boating, hiking, and exploring the “Little Balkans” immigrant heritage of southeastern Kansas.
Plan Your Visit
Crawford State Park offers camping (57 sites), swimming beach, boat ramps, and a 150-acre lake with excellent crappie fishing. Pittsburg (10 miles east) — the “Little Balkans” capital — is famous for its fried chicken restaurants (Chicken Annie’s and Chicken Mary’s have competed since the 1940s). The region’s coal mining heritage is preserved at the Big Brutus mining shovel museum — the world’s largest electric shovel.
Nature & Wildlife
The Ozark Plateau’s streams support smallmouth bass, goggle-eye (rock bass), and crawdads — the basis for the region’s distinctive Balkan-influenced cuisine. White-tailed deer, eastern wild turkeys, and bobwhite quail thrive in the mixed hardwood-prairie habitat. The coal strip mines that once scarred the landscape have been reclaimed as grasslands and wetlands, now supporting migrating waterfowl and shorebirds.
Insider Tips
Coal mining: Crawford County was the center of Kansas’s coal mining industry — immigrants from across Europe built tight-knit mining communities. Pro tip: Southeast Kansas has a unique cultural heritage — Italian, Croatian, and Eastern European immigrants created a food culture (fried chicken, coal-fired pizza) distinct from the rest of Kansas. Strip mining: Abandoned strip mines created the lakes that now serve as recreation areas.
Frequently Asked Questions
Was Kansas a mining state?
Southeast Kansas produced millions of tons of coal, lead, and zinc from the 1870s-1960s — transforming prairie into an industrial landscape. Coal mining attracted immigrant workers from Italy, Croatia, and Eastern Europe. The Tri-State Mining District (Kansas-Missouri-Oklahoma) was one of the world’s largest zinc and lead producers. Mining declined after WWII — leaving behind both environmental contamination and unique cultural communities that persist today.
