Buckhorn Lake State Resort Park

About this park

Buckhorn Lake State Resort Park occupies 856 acres in the northwest corner of Perry County, deep in the rugged foothills of the Cumberland Plateau and adjoining the northern edge of the Daniel Boone National Forest. Both the park and the nearby town of Buckhorn take their unusual name from the discovery of a buck's horn at a nearby salt lick, a detail preserved in local history long before the area became a state park. The 1,230-acre Buckhorn Lake itself was created in 1961 when a dam was built across the Middle Fork of the Kentucky River for flood control, submerging land once inhabited by Native American communities. A federal economic development project in 1967 significantly expanded the park's facilities, adding new lodge rooms, a resort pool, boat slips, horseback riding trails, a fishing pier, and a miniature golf course to what had originally been a more modest 24-room lodge and beach built a few years earlier. Today the park's 36-room lodge and cottages all overlook the lake, and visitors can swim, boat, canoe, and fish in water known for strong catches amid the surrounding mountain wilderness. Its remote, mountainous setting in eastern Kentucky gives Buckhorn Lake a quieter, more secluded character than many of the state's other resort parks.