About Swim Holes Map
I'm Nicolas Sartor, and I built Swim Holes Map after years of finding swimming holes the slow way: a mention in a comment thread, a pin on someone else's map, a trailhead sign that doesn't say whether you're even allowed in the water. So I built the thing I wanted to exist: one page per swimming hole with how to get there and the rules that apply.
The problem
Good swimming holes are public, but the facts you need before hiking out to one are hard to pin down:
- Who manages the land, and whether swimming is even allowed, sits on a park page, a forest order, or an agency PDF.
- Access routes and seasonal closures are scattered across trail pages and notices that change year to year.
- Most of what's online is a pin on someone's map or a comment thread, with no source and no date.
Swim Holes Map pulls the real access facts from the agencies that manage the land into one page per named swimming hole.
What you get here
- Real, named swimming holes: creek pools, springs, waterfall basins, and swim rocks.
- Per hole: how to reach the water and the access rules, as the managing agency publishes them.
- A map on every page.
Where the data comes from
Access rules come from the agencies that manage the land, starting with state parks. Each page cites its sources and the date each was checked, and when no source says something, the page leaves it out rather than guessing.
Who's behind this
It's just me working on this on the side, no team and no editorial board: one person reading agency records and writing down what they say. Swim Holes Map is one of a group of sites I write and maintain under the Wild Atlas Media network, all built on the same idea: take the federal and state data that's already public, put it in one place, and make it easy to use.
Sister sites: Public Lands DB for who manages the land and its camping rules, closures, and fire restrictions, CampgroundsDB for public campgrounds and how to book them, Fishypedia for fish stocking reports and lake-by-lake fishing, and ReservoirFinder for reservoir water levels against full pool. Boat ramps are next.
Tell me what's missing or wrong
If a swimming hole near you isn't accurate, one is missing, or there's a feature you wish this had, I want to hear it. Email nicolas.sartor@wildatlasmedia.com.