Park History

Atlanta State Park sits on 1,475 acres along the southern shores of Wright Patman Lake in Cass County. The lake is in northeast Texas, southwest of Texarkana.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers oversaw the impoundment of the Sulphur River to create the lake. Construction of the lake’s dam began in 1948 and finished in 1953. The lake covers 20,300 acres with an average depth of 7.6 feet. It has 170 miles of shoreline.  

The lake was originally known as Lake Texarkana. It was renamed in the 1970s to honor Wright Patman, a longtime congressman from East Texas.

Texas entered into a lease with the Department of the Army in 1954 to establish a public park on the lake’s shore.