The exact page text, read by your browser's voice.
Established 1969 · lake 1977
The park's fame mechanism is scale joined to a story: it is one of Indiana's most visited state parks, and its lake exists because one local man would not stop asking. The DNR's own description gives the frame — 3,840 acres about twelve miles southwest of South Bend, a 327-acre lake, old fields, mature woodlands, restored prairies and diverse wetlands, a campground of several hundred sites, cabins, trails and a nature center. The lake is Worster Lake, created in 1977 when Potato Creek was dammed, and named for Darcy Worster — spelled "Darcey" in one visitor record of the nature center's "Dream Come True" panel, and both spellings stand in this build — who spent decades re-creating natural areas on the ground and lobbying to dam the creek for a fishing and recreation reservoir, sending hand-crafted insects to legislators as reminders, on the park histories' telling. The park was established in 1969, before the lake, on primarily farmland. Native peoples used the area for hunting and fishing and gathered the wild tubers that gave the creek its name. Fame, here, is not a single event but a standing fact: for most outsiders who know the words "North Liberty" at all, this park is what they know.