- (upbeat music)
- My name's Chris Coniaris and I'm here to have a fun day
kayaking on the lake.
I'm thrilled. The one thing we don't have in Tucson
is water, so water sports, you often have to travel
and to have something less than 90 minutes away
from Tucson makes it very accessible.
- This is our first trip to the lake and we heard about it
from a few friends. They said if you need water in Arizona
that this is the place to come.
So it's pretty close to Sierra Vista, so it was an
easy drive for us today.
I love it. I'm actually really surprised.
The pictures online don't do this place justice.
It's very pretty.
The slope from the hill down to the lake makes it
very easy for us to sit up here as parents and enjoy
the shade while our kids can go crazy in the water.
And it feels very safe. They're not too far.
I've got a good view of everything around me.
Good view of the beach. Very well set up.
(water splashes)
- The lake itself surface acres is 265 surface acres of
actual surface water.
The park itself is not too much bigger.
With the camp grounds,
it's almost 600 acres, the park itself.
We also manage the state trust land
which surrounds the park.
That's over 2,000 acres.
And then the Sonoita Creek State Natural Area
is several thousand acres.
We have camping. We have 13 campsites out on the lake.
The real popular ones, we have a big island and
a smaller island that people like to use.
Obviously, skiing, wakeboarding.
- We have several different species of fish.
We have largemouth bass. We have channel cat
and flathead cat.
We also have bluegill, crappie.
In the wintertime, we stock with trout.
And we have several different tournaments a year
for the largemouth bass.
- Quite a bit of bass here.
It's a tough lake, but I've caughten some good fish,
five- six-pound range in here,
and it's just a great lake. It's a fun lake.
It's tough. It's not a numbers lake where
you're gonna catch 10, 20 fish a day,
but it is tough and it has produced in the past.
- There's a lot of wildlife. We have everything from
the big predator, the mountain lion,
to the little ringtail cats, raccoons, skunk.
All your normal stuff.
One of the biggest draws we have here at the lake is our
birding program. People come from miles and miles
and other states and countries to see the Elegant Trogon.
It's one of our favorite birds and most famous birds,
along with the Kingfisher, Gnatcatchers.
Over 200 different species of birds are found here
at Patagonia Lake.
So one of the interesting things about the park
is that it was built over top of the New Mexico
Patagonia Railroad.
The railroad was constructed in the late 1800s
and abandoned in the mid 1900s.
It started in Benson, Arizona, traveled through Sonoita,
down through Patagonia into Mexico all the way to (mumbles).
The railroad was used for transport of cattle
for the local ranchers and also the local mines
transported their ore to market.
- I'm Bob Bergier and I found this at the ranch
about a hundred years, and I've lived here
about 40 years full time now.
Patagonia State Park was formed by these men,
one of them my father, and they built a recreational lake.
These are the documents to get the loan.
They had to prove that the people
in the area wanted to do this.
So this is the signatures of people lived on in 1966.
It's very interesting who lived here then and
all of them signing these documents.
I was about 20, I was at NAU.
I didn't pay attention, though.
Later, I was overwhelmed that they did that.
That all these men got together and did that.
Something like that would never happen now.
I don't know what they were thinking.
I mean really, they had a different attitude.
They just, let's build it. We can do it.
But one of the big problems they had,
that road was dirt and they realized they could
never probably afford to pave that whole road.
And it's one of the reasons I think they made the deal
with the state to have a state park.
(guitar plays)
- I got this little boat a few months ago.
It's quiet, you know, and it's relaxing.
And it's close to Tucson. It's not that far away.
And it's definitely a totally different climate.
It's usually a bit cooler.
It's a fun place to escape for a while and feel
like you're maybe not in a desert.