Nature Notebook ~ Water we gonna do now? Pt II | Outdoors

Beach at Lake Arrowhead may never reopen

By Dylan Cooper, Outdoor columnist

Last summer I wrote about how the Hawksbill Creek isn’t always safe to wade/swim in during the warm months because of bacteria levels, so where else do we turn when we want to get in the water in Page County? Some of the County’s other creeks have the exact same water quality issues, they just aren’t being tested. You can still find a few that might be clean enough to enjoy a refreshing dip, but it’d likely be up high in the mountains and I don’t want to blow up anybody’s spots by naming them.

Before we cover the Shenandoah River and all of its issues in other installments, let’s turn to our next biggest freshwater resource in Page County: Lake Arrowhead, once hailed to have the best beach in the Shenandoah Valley.

I spent A LOT of my time as a youth at the lake. Many of my fishing excursions took place there from as soon as I learned to cast a push-button reel and let my bobber sit, to renting paddle boats, all the way up to taking friends out in my boat on Friday nights for catfishing. We took many hikes on the loop trail around Lake Arrowhead while looking at beavers, geese, eagles and bass. I remember watching a helicopter come in and dip for water out of the lake to fight a forest fire in the national park. I recall “nearly freezing to death” at a Cub Scout camp one night there when my dad stayed up all night tending to a small propane heater in our tent. Perhaps most of all, the most impactful time was when I spent it in the water.

Built in 1971 by the USDA Soil Conservation Service as a flood control impoundment, Lake Arrowhead has had a beach and swimming area for many decades. Back when it was still open to swimming and wading (typically from Memorial Day to Labor Day weekends), admission was still a very affordable family outing for a day (kids under 3: free, Ages 3 to 12: $3/day, Ages 13 & older: $5/day), especially when compared to a lot of public pools and water parks nowadays. And what a safe place it was for young children to get in the water where you wouldn’t have to worry about poor water quality, currents, or threatening wildlife.

The Town of Luray made a bold decision last year to not only not open the beach at Lake Arrowhead, but to rip it out entirely. This is the same beach that when I was a toddler I learned to walk on the sand and in the water while I fed my snacks to the ducks and geese (not bread! and yes, it had some goose poop you had to watch out for, but that just taught me to look where I walked). It was the same beach where I took my first swimming lessons around 5 years old with Kelly Slye. The same beach where I mustered up the courage as a pre-teen to finally swim out past where I could stand, then climb onto the platform and jump in while practicing cannonballs and jack-knifes. And decades later, it’s where I planned to take my own son for safe water recreational opportunities… until last year.

Following the closure announcement made on April 9, 2025, the beach sand was completely removed in April 2025 and in its place was installed an ugly fence, barricade, and signage stating “ATTENTION NO SWIMMING, WADING, FLOATING IN LAKE ARROWHEAD. Violators may be banned from Lake property.” Other signs are scattered around saying “No Trespassing” and “Beach & Swimming area CLOSED” which makes it plenty evident that they don’t want folks in the water. Later they added multiple security cameras covering the area. And now it’s grown back as grass with a fence at the water’s edge.

So I wondered for a long time: would Lake Arrowhead’s beach ever reopen? The rumor mill had been fairly active on that question. It seemed when the Town announced it was closed for the 2025 season, the wording made it sound like it was for the season, not permanently. The reasoning we heard from the Town’s Facebook page was because they couldn’t find enough lifeguards and supposedly had no applicants for their job posting of the position, which was only up for a few weeks in early spring. The actual closure notice stated that they were “unable to meet the safety requirements outlined by our legal and insurance providers.” They got quite the backlash on that Facebook post, removed the comments, and since then have turned off comments for most of their Facebook posts dealing with public notices since then, leaving just one-way communication.

The Town Council says they’ve been working on making this decision for a few years so let’s recount the events that led up to it. Back during the COVID pandemic closures in 2020, when folks were clamoring for places to congregate outside, the town left Lake Arrowhead’s beach and swimming area open without a lifeguard and posted “swim at your own risk” signage. Now years later, lawyers complained that could had left the Town liable in event of a water-related accident.

Then in 2021 the post-pandemic crowds, even more thirsty for outdoor recreation, found our sacred place at Lake Arrowhead Beach, and simply overran it and even mistreated it. Trash of all kinds being left on the beach was probably the breaking point for the crew there. But I must add that the number of trash cans available around the lake has dwindled over the last few years, and the amount of trash strewn about had risen dramatically, as noted by my 81-year-old-father who voluntarily picks up trash on his daily morning walks for the last 10-plus years there.

Back in 2022, the Lake had a health/exposure risk issue with toxins from blue-green algae on November 1, which was well after the end of that swimming season. This closure was for “swimming, pet access, boating, fishing, and all other recreational uses.” There are ways to deal with that water quality issue, but I am not aware of anything done to remedy the situation other than testing and closure, which ended in December 2022. To my knowledge, it hasn’t been announced as a problem since then nor was it used as an excuse to permanently close the beach. And that same year PACA started had their annual events of a cardboard boat regatta and polar bear plunge on the Lake Arrowhead beach. The polar bear plunge is scheduled for this Saturday, March 14, 2026, but I guess they’ll have to have it on the boat ramp?

In 2023, the Town had to post “swim at your own risk” signage again and thus, that would leave open the major issue of liability, and sadly, people nowadays like to sue for just about anything. In making that decision, the Town of Luray claimed this time it was due to staffing shortages where they had just five lifeguards hired to cover the season, and these folks liked to be able to take vacation sometimes throughout the summer. Around this time, the scene at Lake Arrowhead had begun to change from a quiet hidden gem in our rural small town into a bustling metropolis, as the word must have gotten out about the “best beach in the Shenandoah Valley.” A Town Council member has stated “there would sometimes be 700 cars there on a Saturday with not enough law enforcement.”

So to get back to April 9, 2025, when the town posted they were not going to be opening the beach for the 2025 season, I thought that seemed a bit premature since, in past years, they had sometimes waited all the way through late May to hire enough lifeguards. But it seemed they were going with more of a ‘nuclear option’ this time in digging up the beach and fencing it off by May.

In June 2025, the town’s mayor responded to the beach re-opening question saying “the matter has not been further discussed.” Okay, so it sounded like there was going to be a discussion, would it be involving the public? In July 2025, another community facebook post from someone anonymous stated they had heard from town officials they were “not planning on opening lake arrowhead for swimming EVER AGAIN.”

So in February 2026, a paper and online petition to reopen the beach and swimming area was submitted to the Town, which had around 500 cosigners as of this publication. Then in March 2026, the town manager responded to the petition with a letter saying the Town is not contemplating the re-opening of the Lake Arrowhead beach and swimming areas. The primary reasons stated:

The emergency spillway for a flood control dam is no place to build and operate a swimming area or a beach with their supporting facilities.
The lack of enough dependable, qualified, open-water certified lifeguards to safely operate such an open-water swimming facility anywhere at the lake.
The significant overcrowding and repeated disruptions caused by large groups of user, especially on weekends.

Here would be some of my responses:

1) The newly installed metal fence stretching across the emergency spillway is more of a flood hazard for debris collection than those couple facilities were, in my professional opinion as an engineer who does floodplain studies.

2) Yes, lifeguards are hard to find especially when they can make more money in the more recently opened private facilities. Pay them more, advertise longer than just in March like was done in 2025. The increase in pay pales in comparison to what it probably cost for the operation to remove the entire beach, and now there is one less community resource.

3) Well the facility boasted 500-600 users a day 40 years ago. If you can’t handle that now, make it have a hard cut-off for an occupancy limit. The newly installed guard shack/information station manned on weekends as well as dozens of new cameras should make that enforcement possible.

I also want to bring up that in 2025, Luray had drafted their Comprehensive Plan, and in the recommendations for Lake Arrowhead were: “Add Additional Restrooms, Parking, Repair Existing Shelters, and Implement More Recreational Activities.” I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry at that last one, when they had just taken out the main water recreational activity to do at a lake.

Then their final version of the Comprehensive Plan, published in December 2025, has the following list of recommendations for Lake Arrowhead:

1) Expand parking

2) Enhance information station (expansion of services and features)

3) Promote and enhance fishing and boating opportunities and amenities

4) Enhance recreational amenities (basketball and volleyball courts, nature trails)

5) Boat dock and handicap accessible platform

No beach or swimming area was included, but hey, maybe they will make the fishing better? I don’t get out as much as I used to, but I certainly think the fishing has gone downhill drastically to where my yearly permit feels more like a donation. Perhaps now with the swimming area gone they can let the aquatic vegetation come back that would greatly improve habitat and spawning success.

Back to the begging question then, where else can we go in the water when the weather turns hot now? We have just one public pool in the county, the Hawksbill Recreation Park and Pool, and it was opened in 1931 (back then it was privately owned). It remains very affordable for families and I commend the Town of Stanley for keeping up that place and even adding onto the recreational opportunities of that property. Supposedly, they have also had difficulty staffing lifeguards. We also now have two “water parks” in the county at private campgrounds where the entry fees start around $40, but that is simply not sustainable for local families looking for frequent summer fun in the water. Some of the surrounding counties have water parks and indoor or outdoor pools, some of which may be more expensive and of course a further drive. And then the saddest thing I saw on a recent community facebook post, where someone was asking for local pool options for kids, there was an answer that it was just cheaper for a family to rent a room at a hotel that had a pool.

Last summer we endured a record-breaking heat wave (I had recorded 107 degrees for four days straight on my Acurite weather station). The concrete was too hot for a child to safely walk on at a pool. Local streams were just coming out of flood stage and almost the entire Shenandoah River was high in E coli counts. Lake Arrowhead would have been a great spot to go with water temps probably around 70 degrees. We all needed a safe place to go in the water to cool off, that way we can help break the addiction for kids to stay inside all the time on their devices.

Dylan Cooper is a Page County native and graduate of Luray High School and Virginia Tech. He is a stream restoration specialist and a registered professional engineer in the State of Virginia. An avid outdoorsman and ardent environmentalist, he currently resides in Luray with his family.

Email: currentsolutionsva@gmail.com

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PREVIOUS “Nature Notebook” Columns

Nature Notebook ~ How to get scammed by a Waterfowl Guide

Nature Notebook ~ Water we gonna do now? Part I

Nature Notebook: Rallying for the rivers

Nature Notebook: Take a kid outdoors

Nature Notebook: The wild ride of 2022 is over

Nature Notebook: Oh deer! We’ve got a problem to bear

Nature Notebook: How to fish like a tourist

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