Carson Park occupies a wooded peninsula in Half Moon Lake on the west side of town, and it manages to pack three genuinely interesting attractions into 134 acres. The Paul Bunyan Logging Camp is an open-air museum of the 19th-century timber industry — seven authentic logging camp buildings, including a bunkhouse, cook shanty, and blacksmith shop, staffed by interpreters in period dress. It brings the industry that built Eau Claire to life more effectively than most indoor museums manage.
The Chippewa Valley Museum next door covers the broader regional history with permanent and rotating exhibits. Carson Park Baseball Stadium is where the Eau Claire Bears played minor-league ball in the 1940s and 50s, and where a teenage Hank Aaron began his career. The park also has trails, a swimming beach, a small train ride, and a rose garden — it is the kind of place that gets used year-round by locals in ways that visitors don't always notice.