Sand Bar State Park Beach House (Bath House)

The stone bathhouse at Sand Bar State Park is perhaps the single most substantial summer park building that the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) erected in Vermont. It also represents the contribution of the CCC in the development of twenty-two parks within the Vermont State Park system. The bathhouse, which measures approximately 35 × 90 feet, consists of two parallel, broadly gabled one-and-a-half-story toilet and shower buildings, one each for men and women and linked by a roofed picnic area. The rough-cut stone, oversize fireplace chimney, and massive stained timbers are characteristic of the CCC's rustic style, also seen in hundreds of stone fireplaces and dozens of log picnic shelters the CCC built between 1936 and 1940 in such state parks as Mount Ascutney and Burke Mountain and the Groton and Calvin Coolidge state forests. The CCC built a bathhouse similar to this one at Elmore State Park, and a striking International Style–influenced bathhouse at Crystal Lake State Park in Barton.

On March 13, 1920, the State of Vermont completed land acquisitions that allowed Sand Bar State Park to become a migratory waterfowl sanctuary. Development of the park began in 1933 with CCC workers carting tons of rock to the sand bar to build stone walls to hold fill for park landscaping and buildings. When the park opened in 1935, the bathhouse and a picnic area were finished and the north shore of the sand bar developed into a fine one-thousand-foot-long, shallow public beach, a configuration the park retains today.