Gold Mine Trail

Governor Dodge is Wisconsin's largest state park at over 5,000 acres, and the Gold Mine Trail is its defining hike, looping through sandstone bluff country and past the two lakes that anchor the park's recreation areas. The trail takes its name from a small nineteenth-century gold mine worked on the park's north side, where prospectors briefly pursued traces of placer gold in the stream gravels before finding only frustration. The route begins at the Cox Hollow Lake parking area and climbs through a dry oak savanna on the first sandstone ridgeline, where the exposed Cambrian sandstone outcrops in smooth rounded forms weathered by 500 million years of erosion. The views from the ridge extend over both Cox Hollow and Twin Valley Lakes, their impoundments glinting through the oak canopy below. The trail descends to lake level between the two water bodies and follows the connecting stream corridor through a lush floodplain of silver maple and sycamore before climbing again onto the opposite sandstone ridge. The bluffs on the south side of Twin Valley Lake are particularly impressive, their vertical faces eroded into alcoves and overhangs that shelter colonies of cliff swallows in summer. The final ridge section passes near the remains of the historic gold mine adit, now gated to protect the resident little brown bat colony that roosts inside.