High Cliff State Park

The cliffs that give the park its name are part of the Niagara Escarpment, a long ridge of hard dolomite limestone that curves through the Great Lakes region from Wisconsin to New York, where its edge forms Niagara Falls. The rock was laid down in warm, shallow seas hundreds of millions of years ago, full of ancient coral and sea life, and it has resisted erosion far better than the softer rock around it.

At High Cliff the escarpment rises steeply above the lake, its face broken into ledges, crevices, and tumbled boulders. Trails wind along and below the cliffs, past old lime kilns and quarry remnants from the days when this rock was burned for building lime, and up to overlooks where the whole broad sweep of Lake Winnebago opens out below.

Along the bluff, the park preserves effigy mounds, low earthworks built in the shapes of animals such as panthers and other forms. These were raised by Native peoples of the effigy mound tradition many centuries ago, part of a rich mound-building culture that flourished across southern Wisconsin. They are burial and ceremonial sites, and they remain sacred.

This land is within the ancestral homeland of the Ho-Chunk and Menominee peoples, whose ancestors and relatives shaped this landscape long before it became a park. The mounds are protected, and visitors are asked to stay on the trails and to treat them with the respect due a place of the dead and of prayer, not as a curiosity but as living heritage.

High Cliff offers a rare combination for a Wisconsin park: high bluffs to hike and a big lake at their foot. The upland trails thread through hardwood forest and along the cliff edge to overlooks, while down on the shore a marina, a swimming beach, and boat access put visitors right on Lake Winnebago's water.

The park's variety makes it easy to fill a day, with hiking, biking, fishing, boating, and picnicking all on offer, plus quiet corners of woods and rock for those who want solitude. An observation tower and the cliff overlooks reward the climb with long views across the lake toward the Fox Valley cities on the far shore.

Lake Winnebago is the largest lake wholly within Wisconsin, a broad, shallow water famous for its sailing, its walleye fishing, and its remarkable winter sturgeon spearing season, when anglers cut holes in the ice to hunt one of the oldest fish species alive. The lake sits at the heart of the Fox Valley, ringed by cities like Oshkosh, Appleton, and Fond du Lac.

High Cliff, on the lake's quieter northeastern shore, offers a natural counterpoint to those busy river towns, a green and rocky refuge close to the region's population yet feeling worlds away. It pairs well with a wider tour of the valley's museums, waterways, and small lake towns.

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