A proposal to create a state park on Lake Vermilion got new life with the announcement Friday that the state has agreed to pay United States Steel Corp. $18 million to acquire the scenic parcel in northeastern Minnesota.

Though the deal still needs legislative approval, prospects for the 3,000-acre park, envisioned as one of the crown jewels of the state park system, have improved considerably after some supporters were on the verge of giving up. Pittsburgh-based U.S. Steel had been ready to sell off the largely untouched land for private development.

The land includes five miles of undeveloped shoreline on a pristine 40,000-acre lake dotted with 365 islands that provides easy access to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area. It sits next to the existing Soudan Underground Mine State Park near Tower.

Department of Natural Resources officials said limited daytime use could begin in mid- to-late summer 2011. The earliest the park could be fully operational would be sometime in 2012.

“We’ve got big ideas about what we’d like to do for this new type of a state park and appealing to new types of users,” said Courtland Nelson, director of the agency’s Parks and Trails Division.