Hawthorn Park- Vigo County Parks and Recreation Department — Attraction in Indiana

Me and my fiance arrived here to camp friday evening. Upon arriving we were already warned that there had been some “prostitution” problems going on this summer. Our first day here was fine with no issues up until we fell asleep that night and raccoons had literally got in our tent and took some of our food, trashing the outside area of our tent. Day two came and we had no issues at all, we ended up buying ziplocks and padlocks and made sure everything was put up. Now here we are day 3 to check out day and I’ve been woken up at 3:30am to raccoons eating through the side of my tent and trying to get into it again and is still trying to mess around with me campsite even with me being awake, active and up moving around. I found this quite ridiculous and sad honestly , not only because this was my first time camping in my new tent but also because Hawthorn used to be my favorite place to camp at in years prior but now i feel like i can’t even trust it with animals in the woods stealing and ruining my belongings. If you could try to do something about that or make sure that the park is going around every half hour to an hour like i thought they was supposed to do..Will post photos of what they did to my tent once it’s...

This park use to be one of our favorite paces to bring our kids and grand kids, Until today, the lady ( only being polite unlike her) we had a day planed like we always do every year kids tanning and swimming and a blanket picnic. The children was yelled at in the water for swimming and coming up 5ft from the rope line , and when they came in to get a drink and a small snack she came over and told us we could not feed them in the grass 15ft from the water. And that we had to take the baby and the other 8 kids up to a full picnic table area to allow them to eat. We never had this problem before in any of the last 5 years we have been doing this. We have had Birthdays,weddings , camping trips , family fishing , family cookouts , and I have even reserved this park for my group of friends who use the park every other weekend from April to August for the last 2 summers. Well never again for any of it, rude , mean , and arrogant people. DO NOT USE THE LAKE and expect to have fun unless you just want to swim in a small spot and not have fun. So we will be looking for a new family spot and give our fundraising money...

I love camping in this park! The campgrounds are spaced out well and under lots of trees. It could use more playground equipment on this side of the park, and with the walking/biking trail at the back entrance makes it one of the easier county parks to get to from in town. With this said, It really needs to be a swimming hole again. We don't have to have a shower house, as I understand it was being vandalized, but this park really hasn't had much money spent toward it like Fowler has...which I hate Fowlers campsites.....Suggestion...they should make a paved connection path from the back of the campgrounds to the pavement path that leads to the back entrance. Right now you can only go from end to end and turn around and go back. I'd love a continuous circuit for speed bikes....as of now, other than road and the back trail, all other trails are marked as no bikes. But all in all, for camping and location close to things, this park is great, but could be even better if money was spent...