Hand launches, carry-downs and kayak access
A published access point is not necessarily somewhere you can back a trailer.
out of 27,549 in the atlas — labelled as the agency labelled them, not reclassified
State inventories mix trailer ramps and hand launches freely, because both are public water access and that is what the agency was mapping. We keep the agency's own type wording on the page rather than sorting places into a tidier scheme than the source supports.
The labels you will see
- "Hand launch only" or "carry-down": no trailer. Distance from the parking to the water is the thing to find out and is almost never published.
- "Canoe/kayak access" or a paddling-trail take-out: usually a bank or a short gravel slope, sometimes with a launch pad.
- "Cartop": trailerless launch for a small boat driven to the water's edge.
- A published lane count of zero alongside an access type usually means exactly this: the agency recorded the field, and there is no lane.
If you are towing, read the type field before the drive. If you are paddling, a hand launch is often the better destination anyway — less traffic, and no queue behind a trailer.
Figures on this page are counted from the agency records behind this site each time it is built, and every count states the population it was computed over. See the sources.