Balanced Rock Overlook, Devils Lake State Park

Devils Lake is what geologists call a spring-fed lake with no significant inlet or outlet, sitting in a gap between two high bluffs. The gap was once a river valley cut through the Baraboo Range, but during the last Ice Age glaciers pushed up against the range and dumped great mounds of rock and debris, called moraines, across both ends of the valley. Those natural dams plugged the old river gap, and water backed up behind them to form the lake you see today.

The cliffs and boulders, including Balanced Rock, are Baraboo quartzite, a rock that began as beach sand more than a billion and a half years ago and was later buried, heated, and compressed into some of the hardest stone anywhere. The pink and purple colors come from iron in the ancient sand. Because quartzite resists erosion so well, the range stood firm while softer rock around it wore away, which is why these old hills still rise above the surrounding farmland.

This is Ho-Chunk country, and it has been for a very long time. The Ho-Chunk Nation, whose homeland centers on this part of southern Wisconsin, held the lake and the surrounding hills as a place of deep meaning, and Ho-Chunk people remain present in the region today. Effigy mounds built by ancestral peoples in the shapes of birds and other animals survive within the park, a reminder that this was a living, worked, and honored landscape for thousands of years before it was a state park.

The name Devils Lake is a European rendering that misses the older understanding of the place, which held the lake as a spiritual and powerful site rather than a fearsome one. When you visit, the mounds and the lakeshore deserve the same care and respect you would give any sacred ground. Stay on trails, leave the mounds undisturbed, and let the quiet of the place speak.

The Balanced Rock Trail leaves the south shore and climbs the east bluff by way of hundreds of stone steps set into the slope by park crews long ago. It is not a long trail, but it gains height quickly, and most people stop more than once to catch their breath and look back at the lake spreading out below. Along the way the trail passes through fields of jumbled quartzite talus, blocks that tumbled from the cliffs over the ages.

Near the top the trail delivers you to Balanced Rock itself, poised on its slender base as though a strong push might topple it, though it has held its place for ages. From the ledges nearby you can take in the full basin of Devils Lake, the far west bluff, and the wooded hills rolling away toward the Wisconsin River. Many hikers link this climb with the CCC Trail or the East Bluff Trail to make a loop rather than retracing the steep steps.

The bluffs and woods around Devils Lake hold white-tailed deer, wild turkeys, and the occasional glimpse of a fox or a soaring turkey vulture riding the updrafts off the cliffs. In spring and fall the ridgelines become flyways for migrating hawks and eagles, and the lake draws waterfowl. Along the rocky ledges, watch for the small, sun-warmed lizards and the wildflowers that root in cracks in the quartzite.

Each season reshapes the place. Spring brings wildflowers and rushing color to the woods, summer fills the beaches and trails with visitors, and autumn sets the bluffs ablaze with red and gold, drawing photographers to the overlooks. Winter empties the trails and dusts the cliffs with snow, and on a cold, clear day the frozen lake and quiet stone make for one of the park's most striking, and least crowded, moods.

The closest Boutel™ stays, so you can turn this stop into an overnight. Each is an independently owned, editorially selected place to stay.