Rocky Point, Idaho — New Deal Architecture on the Shore of Chatcolet Lake

Rocky Point projects into Chatcolet Lake inside Heyburn State Park, where cottages and residential leases share the shoreline with public recreation land.

Its most distinctive built history comes from the Civilian Conservation Corps.

During the 1930s, CCC crews constructed a lodge, picnic shelter and other facilities at Rocky Point as part of the New Deal's enormous investment in parks and public lands. Surviving structures are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

The setting still does much of what those crews designed it to do: people swim, boat, picnic and stay along the lakeshore.

That gives Rocky Point an unusual mixture of private and public life. It is simultaneously a small inhabited lake community and a piece of Depression-era park design still being used for its intended purpose.