Chase State Fishing Lake — Local services in Cottonwood Falls

If you’re wanting to hike, drive about 0.3 miles up the rock road and park along the tree line where the reservoir starts. Go under the car blockade and walk along the path that crosses the reservoir edge. It’s well marked and very safe for kids of any age to walk by themselves. You could either turn right to go down to a beach area or go left to walk down to a small waterfall area. If you go to the falls, try to time if after a storm so it’s more than a trickle. Even if you don’t, though, there will be some small water areas that make it the perfect place to hunt for turtles, small snakes, and crayfish! It’s not too steep or hard, so it’s a good hike for any age. Great place to take the kids for a day outside! There’s fishing, hiking, a small waterfall that’s easily accessible, small beach areas for skipping rocks and finding shells, and endless wildlife to find. We’ve found turtles, crayfish, snakes, and tons of cool butterflies, dragonflies, and dandelions as big...

This place is gorgeous and tranquil. There are several man-made jetties for water access, unused one to set up my tent on. I would not recommend doing this as the jerries are quite narrow and sides are steep and rocky. I loved camping on it though! The place is beautiful offering fishing, boating, camping, hiking, and sky gazing. The sky. Wow. It's easy to forget how beautiful our sky is when we live around so much light pollution. This camp site is just out of major light pollution so I was able to clearly see our arm of the Milky Way, truly spectacular. If you have never seen the Milky Way or didn't even know you could view it with your naked eye, I would highly recommend Googling Light Pollution Map and head to the dark areas and look up. Will...

Prather Creek Falls, also called Chase Lake Falls, is a waterfall in three sections on the spillway of Chase State Fishing Lake. As a spillway waterfall, it's very sensitive to water levels. Despite rain when we visited, there was very little water flow. Only the lowest section looked anything like a waterfall. The middle section looks like it would be the most scenic if the water was higher. You can park by the dam and follow a path across the dam and then down the spillway to the waterfall. Although the waterfall was a little disappointing, there were a lot if wildflowers blooming along the dam and the lake was...