Palo Pinto Mountains State Park

Beautiful new State Park with lots to explore. The hiking trail for Bens Trails to Tucker Lake trail is a short 5 mile loop around the lake with lots of great views and photo opportunities. The trail is nice and wide and well marked. It is an easy to moderate hike with lots of little ups and downs. Definitely wear hiking shoes. Check out the cool fishing pier!!

What a cool park. As the newest park, it’s very clean. The buildings are very sleek, campsites are spacious. The trails are wide and well maintained. The lake is beyond full. Looks like it’s be great for kayaking! Not too May campsites but the seem to prioritize quality over quantity. They are still doing some work as of mid April but it looks great.

Visited this park yesterday on Saturday June 13, 2026 about 1 hour outside of Fort Worth going west, 2 hours if you leave from North Dallas/Dallas area and drive the speed limit. I saw a lot of highway patrol giving tickets on I20 on both sides so be careful. Toyota Camry flew past us in the fast lane only to be followed about 30 seconds later by a highway patrol who raced past us and got right on their tale and lit them up. Office opens at 8am. Park gate actually opens at 6am, you need to check in when you get there early by paying with envelope next to the stop sign and office drive through. Put info (be sure to bring a pen) and money in the envelope, tear off the hang tag for your rearview mirror, put envelope in drop box where you got the envelope. Office area restrooms seem to be closed and they had porta-potties for now but if you drive or walk north about 200 yards there is a large working restroom with running hot and cold water and showers. Limited parking there at the restroom area. We had looked at the ratings and time on the official PPMSP website map for the trails and it was a hot day so we got out there at around 7:30am and by 8am on the trail to take the Tucker Lake Trail around the lake rated moderate at 2.5 hours completion time. It was not bad when we first got there heat wise and we started around the north side of the lake with lots of shade and stops here and there to have water and snacks which there are really no good places to stop and rest once you get to the west side of the lake past the fishing peer and picnic areas. The trail moved along fine for the first 2 hours but then the sun started getting up high in the sky and getting hot only for us to learn we had not even made it around half of the trail. By this time we were starting to get hot and my mother was with us and she is 74. She doesn't take the heat well especially getting into direct sunlight on a hot day. The rest of the trail was little to no shade on the south side of the lake by 11am. I am not sure who rated this trail at 2.5 hours like it states on the map on the "official" website but they need to have a range for this because it ended up taking 4.5 hours and I thought my mother was going to need to be care flighted out of there and she is in fairly good shape for her age. We loved the park. Scenery was incredible, trails were good, fishing peer is very nice. Be forewarned there are a lot of people there on a Saturday and it gets noisy. There were a lot of people on the trails talking like they wanted everyone in the world to know they were there. It's supposed to be a peaceful place to hike. Some people love to hear themselves talk (as loud as they can). If I hadn't gotten so worried about my mom and the trail had not taken substantially longer than what the website listed this would have gotten 5 stars. Would be a solid spot with cooler weather, maybe in the fall. Nice place to tent camp and hike. I bet the stars pop out of the sky here. High def.

The view at Palo Pinto Mountains is amazing! The grill and shelter area are very nice, and everything looks brand new. The park staff were so friendly and helpful, and they guided us very nicely. We also enjoyed Ben’s Trail. Overall, it was a beautiful and relaxing place to visit.

Beautiful park! Visited for the day on a weekday so it wasn't crowded. Did the loop around the lake (Ben's Trail > Lakeshore > Spillway > Tucker Lake Trail). Absolutely loved it! I enjoy taking my time (lots of pics/videos) so the loop took me 4 hours but could be done much faster. I found the fishing pier, Lakeshore Accessible Trail and flat section Spillway section along the spillway to be the best views of the lake. But, entire hike was very scenic. In hindsight, I wish I'd have done the Buttonbush Spur too. The only thing I didn't love about this park were the bathrooms. I only encountered vault toilets (which I used at 3 different locations) and no sinks for handwashing afterward. Park was truly stunning and the gentlemen who worked the gate was so friendly and helpful! Can't wait to go back!