Facilities

Overview

Sand Bar State Park takes its name from a natural sandbar between South Hero Island in Grand Isle County and the town of Milton on the Vermont mainland. The park is on that sandbar's mainland, or the eastern end. Over tens of thousands of years, the sandbar itself is the result of the Lamoille River washing sediment downstream from the present Lamoille Valley. The river-borne material sank to the bottom as the river emptied into the lake, eventually filling the lake to create the marshland south and east of the park and the sandbar to the west. Without the sandbar, natural lake depths would be over 150 feet. Water depth now along the top of the sandbar to South Hero is only a couple of feet. Because of the shallow water, the route along the sandbar served as a ford from the mainland to the islands well before the construction of the first bridge in 1850.