Bought 9 acres next to a state park and never got a single site built

I paid 61k for 9 acres about two miles from the entrance to a state park, thinking I'd put in 20 sites eventually and sell nightly stays. Two years later I sold the land for 58k and walked away with less than that after closing costs.

What killed it wasn't the land. The parcel was zoned for agriculture and the county's table of uses had campgrounds as a conditional use in that district, which I read as a green light. It wasn't. The conditional use process required a septic design stamped by an engineer before the hearing, and the soil work came back showing I'd need an engineered mound system for anything past about 6 sites. First quote was 88k. That's before water, before a single gravel pad, before power drops.

So the real number to open 20 sites was somewhere north of 300k on top of the 61k, and I had maybe 90k total. I couldn't phase it either, because the septic sizing had to be designed for the approved site count up front in that county. Rules on this vary a lot by state and by county, so don't assume mine is yours.

What I'd do differently: pay for the perc test and a rough septic sizing opinion before closing on the dirt, or at minimum write it in as a contingency. That's maybe 2k of due diligence that would have told me the whole plan was too big for my wallet. I bought the view and the location and never priced the plumbing.