Arrow Rock
- Right now
- Closedrecreation.gov lists every site closed this weekend, read 16:16 UTC
- A night
- $16–$22When it reopens, per site
- Sites
- 43In the agency’s record
The place
the agency’s own description · what’s there · 7 notices
In the agency’s own words
Arrow Rock Campground is situated on Melvern Lake on the eastern edge of the Flint Hills of Kansas. Visitors enjoy the area's wide range of recreational activities, including boating, fishing, hiking and hunting. Find a virtual tour of Melvern Lake at http://www.photographyoptions.net/images/melvern/tour.html Recreation Melvern Lake impounds nearly 7,000 acres of water on the upper reaches of the Marais des Cygnes River Valley. Boating and swimming are popular activities on the lake. Anglers will find walleye, crappie, channel and flathead catfish, as well as black, striped, white and smallmouth bass. Keep reading
The 18,000 acres of land surrounding Melvern Lake provide plentiful hiking and hunting opportunities. Several trails wind around the lake, including the 4-mile Tallgrass Heritage Trail, which begins in the campground. Hunters may find deer, quail, turkeys, ducks, rabbits and squirrels throughout the area.
Facilities
The campground offers 33 campsites, 19 of which have electric and water hookups. Several picnic sites are available on a first come, first served basis. Amenities include flush and vault toilets, showers, drinking water and a dump station. A boat ramp, dock, fish cleaning station and playground offer additional recreation opportunities. Click Here for a Virtual Tour (http://www.photographyoptions.net/images/melvern/tour.html)
Natural Features
The Flint Hills represent America's last expanse of intact tallgrass prairie, made up of big bluestem, switchgrass and Indian grass. The rolling hills on the south side of the lake are wooded, but trees and shade are more sparse within the campground. Contact Info For local information, please call (877) 444-6777 or call (785) 549-3318 for general information.
What the agency tells you
Failure to be on site within 24 hours of your reservation check-in time will result in a no-show status.
A poilicy of the Corps of Engineers is to require all campers, including camping units, that camping at one or more campsites at any one water resource project for a period longer than 14 days during any 30-consecutive-day period is prohibited.
Don't Move Firewood: Protect your forests from tree-killing pests by buying your firewood locally and burning it on-site. Visit Dontmovefirewood.org for further information.
Everything else this campground posts · 4
Call the Melvern Lake Project Office at 785-549-3318 with additional questions.
Melvern Lake virtual tour available at: http://www.photographyoptions.net/images/melvern/tour.html
Generators are allowed on nonelectric sites until quiet hours begin at 10 PM.
For the safety of all visitors, please leave your golf carts at home; only licensed, street-legal vehicles are permitted on project roadways, and off-road driving is prohibited. Unless you get pre-approval from Lake Project Office.
Tents and rigs
- Sites
- 43
- Hookups
- 19 electric, 19 water
- Longest rig
- 78 ft
- Paved pads
- All
- Accessible sites
- 1
- Pets
- Allowed
- Campfires
- Allowed, barring fire bans
- Shade
- Every site
Facilities
- Toilets
- Vault Toilets
- “…basis. Amenities include flush and vault toilets, showers, drinking water and a dump station. A boat…”
- Showers
- Yes, the record doesn’t say what kind
- “Amenities include flush and vault toilets, showers, drinking water and a dump station.”
- Drinking water
- Yes
- “…flush and vault toilets, showers, drinking water and a dump station. A boat ramp, dock, fish…”
- Dump station
- Yes
- recreation.gov lists “Dump Station”
- Boat ramp
- Yes
- Playground
- Yes
- Stay limit
- 14 nights
- recreation.gov facility rule maxStay
Around the campground
- On the water
- Lake, River
- Birding
- Boating
- Fishing
- Hiking
- Hunting
- Water access
- Night sky · 18th darkest of 57 in KS
- Bortle 4
Nothing to book until it reopensread 16:16 UTC
recreation.gov lists every site closed this weekend
Every one of the next thirty nights is in recreation.gov’s record and not one site is being offered on any of them. That’s a campground closed or not yet released for booking, not a sold-out one.
Tell me when it reopens
Watch for it to come back
One email when the agency reopens it, plus More Than Just Parks dispatches. Unsubscribe any time.
We check the agency’s own record once an hour, at 40 minutes past, and write the first time it stops saying closed.
Scanners that check every few minutes exist, and most of them charge. This one is free, it reads the same calendar, and it won’t always be first.
Every line of the receipt · 13
What you actually pay
Who keeps the booking fee
The agency’s own policy text says the reservation fee and the cancellation processing fee are “retained by the reservation service contractor”, and that a campground concessionaire will decline to refund them because “they did not receive these fees”. Recreation.gov is run under contract by Booz Allen Hamilton. What share of your booking fee the contractor keeps isn’t published in any federal dataset we can read, so we print no number for it. Our reporting on the contract →
How we know this receipt · 4
Why this page can’t say why
recreation.gov lists every site at Arrow Rock closed this Friday and Saturday night. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has published no closure notice we hold, so this page can’t say why, and it won’t fill the gap with a guess. A closed night isn’t a sold-out one: the reservations its record still carries were taken before the sites were closed.
There’s no notice to quote and no reason to argue with, so this page offers you the watch and the list below, and no letter.
recreation.gov availability, read 16:16 UTC · rules read Sep 9, 2026 · rates Oct 1, 2026 · How we know all this
The sites
43 sites · which ones have room · the site map
The sites, ranked
from 33 mapped sitesAll 43 sites
Toilet distances are OpenStreetMap’s, measured for 43 of the 43 sites listed. A site with no reading is unknown, never far.
The price is derived by CAMPANAC, not published per site: the per-night rate this campground publishes for each site’s own site type. 33 of the 43 sites listed carry one, and a site whose type has no published rate sits out of the price rather than being called free.
| ARROW ROCK | 01 | standard electric | 65 ft | 30 amp | 43 ft | 236 ft | 246 ft | $22 | |
| ARROW ROCK | 02 | standard electric | 65 ft | 30 amp | 43 ft | 206 ft | 280 ft | $22 | |
| ARROW ROCK | 03 | standard electric | 78 ft | 30 amp | 88 ft | 168 ft | 215 ft | $22 | |
| ARROW ROCK | 04 | standard electric | 65 ft | 30 amp | 43 ft | 110 ft | 219 ft | $22 | |
| ARROW ROCK | 05 | standard electric | 65 ft | 30 amp | 43 ft | 150 ft | 176 ft | $22 | |
| ARROW ROCK | 06 | standard nonelectric | 65 ft | 46 ft | 123 ft | 252 ft | $16 | ||
| ARROW ROCK | 07 | standard nonelectric | 65 ft | 46 ft | 98 ft | 298 ft | $16 | ||
| ARROW ROCK | 08 | standard nonelectric | 75 ft | 83 ft | 151 ftMelvern Lake | 296 ft | $16 | ||
| ARROW ROCK | 09 | standard nonelectric | 55 ft | 48 ft | 126 ftMelvern Lake | 319 ft | $16 | ||
| ARROW ROCK | 10 | standard nonelectric | 55 ft | 48 ft | 149 ftMelvern Lake | 277 ft | $16 | ||
| ARROW ROCK | 11 | standard nonelectric | 65 ft | 52 ft | 208 ftMelvern Lake | 142 ft | $16 | ||
| ARROW ROCK | 12 | standard nonelectric | 65 ft | 52 ft | 158 ftMelvern Lake | 195 ft | $16 | ||
| ARROW ROCK | 14 | standard nonelectric | 55 ft | 40 ft | 146 ftMelvern Lake | 238 ft | $16 | ||
| ARROW ROCK | 15 | standard nonelectric | 55 ft | 40 ft | 184 ftMelvern Lake | 215 ft | $16 | ||
| ARROW ROCK | 16 | standard nonelectric | 65 ft | 42 ft | 296 ftMelvern Lake | 136 ft | $16 | ||
| ARROW ROCK | 17 | standard nonelectric | 65 ft | 42 ft | 255 ftMelvern Lake | 160 ft | $16 | ||
| ARROW ROCK | 19 | type not stated | 65 ft | 265 ftMelvern Lake | 316 ft | ||||
| ARROW ROCK | 20 | standard nonelectric | 65 ft | 96 ft | 312 ftMelvern Lake | 309 ft | $16 | ||
| ARROW ROCK | 21 | standard electric | 55 ft | 30 amp | yes | 62 ft | 465 ftMelvern Lake | 498 ft | $22 |
| ARROW ROCK | 22 | standard electric | 55 ft | 30 amp | 61 ft | 406 ftMelvern Lake | 489 ft | $22 | |
| ARROW ROCK | 23 | standard electric | 55 ft | 30 amp | 55 ft | 451 ftMelvern Lake | 559 ft | $22 | |
| ARROW ROCK | 24 | standard electric | 55 ft | 30 amp | 57 ft | 386 ftMelvern Lake | 549 ft | $22 | |
| ARROW ROCK | 25 | standard electric | 55 ft | 30 amp | 55 ft | 443 ftMelvern Lake | 613 ft | $22 | |
| ARROW ROCK | 26 | standard electric | 55 ft | 30 amp | 57 ft | 373 ftMelvern Lake | 605 ft | $22 | |
| ARROW ROCK | 27 | standard electric | 55 ft | 30 amp | 55 ft | 441 ftMelvern Lake | 675 ft | $22 | |
| ARROW ROCK | 28 | standard electric | 55 ft | 30 amp | 56 ft | 372 ftMelvern Lake | 669 ft | $22 | |
| ARROW ROCK | 29 | standard electric | 55 ft | 30 amp | 55 ft | 436 ftMelvern Lake | 728 ft | $22 | |
| ARROW ROCK | 30 | standard electric | 55 ft | 30 amp | 56 ft | 364 ftMelvern Lake | 725 ft | $22 | |
| ARROW ROCK | 31 | standard electric | 55 ft | 30 amp | 55 ft | 432 ftMelvern Lake | 790 ft | $22 | |
| ARROW ROCK | 32 | standard electric | 55 ft | 30 amp | 57 ft | 359 ftMelvern Lake | 783 ft | $22 | |
| ARROW ROCK | 33 | standard electric | 55 ft | 30 amp | 55 ft | 427 ftMelvern Lake | 845 ft | $22 | |
| ARROW ROCK | 34 | standard electric | 45 ft | 30 amp | 57 ft | 353 ftMelvern Lake | 840 ft | $22 | |
| ARROW ROCK | 35 | type not stated | 45 ft | 166 ftMelvern Lake | 948 ft | ||||
| ARROW ROCK | 36 | type not stated | 45 ft | 167 ftMelvern Lake | 902 ft | ||||
| ARROW ROCK | 37 | type not stated | 45 ft | 174 ftMelvern Lake | 846 ft | ||||
| ARROW ROCK | 38 | type not stated | 45 ft | 179 ftMelvern Lake | 799 ft | ||||
| ARROW ROCK | 39 | type not stated | 45 ft | 187 ftMelvern Lake | 737 ft | ||||
| ARROW ROCK | 40 | type not stated | 45 ft | 186 ftMelvern Lake | 691 ft | ||||
| ARROW ROCK | 41 | type not stated | 45 ft | 193 ftMelvern Lake | 636 ft | ||||
| ARROW ROCK | 42 | type not stated | 65 ft | 198 ftMelvern Lake | 564 ft | ||||
| ARROW ROCK | 43 | type not stated | 75 ft | 238 ftMelvern Lake | 475 ft | ||||
| ARROW ROCK | 44 | standard nonelectric | 65 ft | 37 ft | 212 ftMelvern Lake | 401 ft | $16 | ||
| ARROW ROCK | 45 | standard nonelectric | 65 ft | 37 ft | 249 ftMelvern Lake | 387 ft | $16 |
25 of 43 listed
Getting there
the map and the coordinate · the agency’s directions · the phone number
Where it is
Turkey Point1.7 mi
Coeur D'alene2.3 mi
Outlet(Melvern)3.3 mi
Carbolyn Park13 mi
Outlet (Pomona Lake)15 mi
Wolf Creek (KS)17 miFrom US-75, take the Olivet exit. Continue onto K-276 west for 1 mile, then turn north onto South Fairlawn Road and continue another mile. Turn west onto Arrow Rock Parkway and follow to the campground.
The weather
the next four days · the thirty-year normal
Next four days, and the thirty-year normal
Forecast
NWS forecast for Olivet, KS
Typical weather
Typical October night 46°F, day 70°F.
Coldest month of the year: typical January night 20°F, below freezing. Bring a bag rated colder than that, and expect ice in the water bottle.
Daily high and lowDays with 0.10 in or more
A normal is the 1991-2020 average for the month, not a forecast: about half of all Julys are colder than the July line. The seven-day forecast above answers the other question.
The land, and who answers for it
who answers for it
Who answers for this land
Arrow Rock is in Kansas’s 2nd congressional district. Its representative, Derek Schmidt (R), votes on the laws that decide what happens to this land. Public-lands grade so far: F. See every public-lands vote →