Hiking Daingerfield State Park

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Daingerfield State Park is located in Daingerfield, Texas, and is about 2 hours from downtown Dallas. The park is located in the Piney Woods of East Texas where you can explore the forest, hike the trails, paddle Little Pine Lake, or relax at a campsite.

Park Location:

455 Park Road 17
Daingerfield, TX 75638

Things To Do:

You can go for a hike, birding, or geocaching. Study nature, camping, or have a picnic. The 80-acre lake allows for swimming, small boating (5 mph speed limit), paddling, and fishing. You can rent one of the park’s historic cabins, or reserve the group hall or pavilion for a group gathering.

Hiking Daingerfield State Park

Daingerfield State Park has two looping trails that are connected. It’s not totally connected but you can easily follow the road or cut across the green spaces to get back to the trails. The trails are natural surfaces. That’s a mixture of native soils, tree roots, leaves, and other things you might find on a forest floor.

Our Hike

We explored a little at the beginning of the hike and got a little confused about where to go. We missed several blazing marks. Our total hike for both loops ended up being 5.14 miles and the total time on the trail of 2:58 hours. That time included taking in nature and exploring the lake and dock.

Overall the trails at the park are easily marked. The trailheads are marked by wooden signs. Then when an official split happens there is another sign. But the Mountain View Trail is difficult to follow. There are multiple places where people have cut their own trails. We started off in the parking lot just before the historic welcome sign. This is where both trails start. There are two starting points for the Mountain View trail. You will start on the Rustling Leaves Trail and you we see an unmarked path (might be a hidden trailhead sign, we missed it) that will take you up and around to the top of the little mountain. If you miss that, you will find another path up to the Mountain View Trail. Following that trail is more difficult and has a lot of switchbacks and some steep spots to navigate. At the top, you find different paths to take. One takes you around the mountain and back to the parking lot (this is the path we missed). At some point, the trail unofficially it’s off the main trail and follows the fence line. It just goes on and on from what I can tell. We went about a mile and the trail continues way past that (this is when we got lost for a few minutes). On that trail, we found some old forgotten forestry equipment that was used when the park was being built.

After backtracking to the top of the mountain we wandered around looking for the trail down. We never found the way down so we took several minutes and found a way down that was the most traveled and the easiest way down. Almost every way down was a steep, narrow, and slippery dirt path down. I had to use my hiking poles to maintain my balance. My wife got down without them and said it was easy. We both do not think we could have gone back up that way.

At the bottom, we did some exploring for fun and then found the Rustling Leaves Trailhead sign and continued our way around the lake and the easy hike around the lake. Near where the Mountain View Trail Meets up with Rustling Leaves Trail there is the old CCC Dam and Bridge. You can’t see the dam but you will cross over it as you cross the bridge.

About halfway around the lake, you will find a side trail that goes out onto a peninsula where the work crews of the CCC thought it would be nice to build a picnic area. They installed picnic tables and grills/firepits. Sadly, only one of the grills/firepits is left. Sadly I deleted the photo of the sign. I will have to revisit the park again.

Eventually, the trail takes you through several camping areas and then between the camping spots and the lake. This section of the trails is used by the campers to get back to the main parts of the park. After coming out of the trees you find the green space, the park’s main buildings, and store. This is where the trail comes to an end. We ended up following the edge of the lake around to the dock and then the road back to our car to complete the loop.

Advice for the trails

• Avoid the trails for several days after heavy rain. It will be muddy. We found spots of mud near the lake even though it hadn’t rained in over a week.
• Bring plenty of bug spray. It’s a lake surrounded by a dense forest. You will find mosquitoes, red bugs, and ticks out there.
• Wear a sturdy pair of shoes preferably a trail shoe/runner or a hiking boot. You will be fine without them but you are going to want them on the steep parts of the Mountain View Trail.
• In our opinion, the best time to hike Daingerfield Sate Park is during the fall colors. This normally happens in November. But this can change each year.

Gear Used

• Oboz Sawtooth B-Dry Shoes – Review | Amazon
• Ozark Trail 45 Liter Backpacking Backpack – Review | Walmart
• EnergeticSky Trekking Poles – Review | Amazon (may be unavailable) | Other options

November 2021 Fall Color Gallery

About the Images

I lost all my camera pictures. Fortunately, I took a ton of low-quality shots with my old Samsung Note 8 and was edited using Adobe Lightroom CC, Topaz Labs Denoise AI and Topaz Labs Sharpen AI, and  Aurora HDR (no longer available but still a great product) to clean up the image. You can create the same effects from Aurora HDR with Luminiar Neo (partner discount codes: JJOHNSTPHOTOG10 – 10% off or JJOHNSTPHOTOG – $10 off) and edit your images.