Hanging Rock State Park Bathhouse

Hanging Rock State Park Bathhouse is a large stone and heavy-timber building on the edge of a twelve-acre lake in the Sauratown Mountains of Stokes County. Federal architect Robert S. Ormand designed it for Civilian Conservation Corps crews to build, and it was completed in 1939 to serve up to 1,000 swimmers a day. The lower level holds dressing areas and basket check space, while the upper level is an open pavilion under a scissors truss roof, with a large stone fireplace. A sandy beach separates the building from the water. Corps crews also built the concrete and stone dam that created the lake. The district includes the bathhouse, lake, shoreline and dam, with a later diving platform and boathouse counted as non-contributing. The property was listed as the largest and most distinctive CCC facility in North Carolina, an example of rustic park design using local stone and timber, and a record of the Depression-era work that shaped the state park system. It remains in its original use.