Patagonia Lake State Park

Patagonia Lake State Park is an Arizona state park on State Route 82, seven miles south of Patagonia, built around the 250-acre Patagonia Lake. The lake is two and a half miles long and was created by damming Sonoita Creek. It supports reproducing largemouth bass, black crappie, bluegill, green sunfish, flathead catfish, threadfin shad, redear sunfish and channel catfish, and rainbow trout are stocked every three weeks from October to March. The park is used for fishing, camping, boating, picnicking, hiking and birding, and contains the Sonoita Creek State Natural Area, the first major state natural area in Arizona. It recorded 235,502 visits in 2024.

Where it is

Patagonia Lake State Park is a state park near Patagonia, in Santa Cruz County. It is one of the state parks in this database, and appears in the statewide ranking of Arizona attractions.

How this ranking was reached

The score combines the published visitor count with public interest and tourism significance, which is what earns it high confidence. The weighting is explained in full on the methodology page, and every axis is broken out under Facts and sources at the foot of this page.

Mentioned in

• Five parks carry half of Arizona's state park visits — Arizona's 32 state park units recorded 3,122,079 visits in 2024, and the five busiest accounted for 53 per cent of them.

Sources

• Visitation: Arizona Office of Tourism Monthly State Parks Visitation Report (December 2025); source Arizona State Parks, compiled by AHRRC(opens in a new tab)
• Public interest: Wikimedia pageviews (en.wikipedia, human traffic), 2024
• Coordinates and designations: Wikidata(opens in a new tab)
• County: U.S. Census geography via FCC Area API, resolved from coordinates
• Official site: https://azstateparks.com/patagonia-lake/(opens in a new tab)

Record last verified 2026-08-12.