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National Park Service · Assateague Island National Seashore · MD

Back Country Camping - State Line

1Heads uppark alert
Information
OSV Status 10/13/26 MD OSV open to the State Line. VA South OSV is open. Beware of overwash conditions at high tides. The VA North OSV fishing mile is closed.
Alerts: National Park Service alerts API · Oct 16, 2026
First come, first servedNo reservation, and none to be had: all 1 sites go to whoever pulls in first.

This is how it should work.

Get directionsWhat it costs, and the rules
Right now
OpenThe agency lists it open
Sites
11 of them walk-up
Season
Year-roundOpen year-round
10 ftElevation
839 ftWater · an unnamed pondOcean · 584 ft
1.7 miNE of Chincoteague, VA
1Walk-up sites
0%Tree cover
Open year-roundToday

The place

the agency’s own description · what’s there

In the agency’s own words

Back Country Camping; ocean side

Source: National Park Service API · Aug 24, 2026

Facilities

Toilets
Vault Toilets - year round
Drinking water
None, bring your own
Dump station
Yes
Source: National Park Service and agency records

Around the campground

On the water
Coast
Night sky · darkest of 62 in MD
Bortle 4
Source: Stated in the agency description
Night sky: VIIRS Day/Night Band annual cloud-free composite, VNL V2 2024 (Earth Observation Group, Colorado School of Mines), read at the published coordinate · Sep 8, 2026

Nothing to book, just show up

One of 1,623 federal campgrounds where the site still goes to whoever pulls in first. Get there before noon on a summer weekend.

recreation.gov publishes no availability for a campground you can’t reserve, so there’s no thirty-night reading to draw here. The season bar above is what the agency does publish.

BookingNo reservationsNothing to book, and no release date to wait forthe agency’s record
Runs itNational Park Servicethe agency’s record
Directions
Every line of the receipt · 5

What you actually pay

The sign priceNational Park Service
The National Park Service publishes no per-night rate for this campground that we can read, so there’s no sign price to print. That’s a gap in the record, not a free campground.
Back Country Camping Permit$10
Vehicle Entrance Fee$25
The booking feerecreation.gov
Nothing. This campground takes no bookings, so there’s no reservation fee to pay.
What a stay costs
The agency publishes no nightly rate for this campground, so there’s no total to show.
How we know this receipt · 4
Booking fee, change fee, cancellation fee, no-show: Rules and Reservation Policies, Recreation.gov, the published fee schedule, curated by hand into lib/reservation-fee-schedule.json (9 rows, each carrying its own verbatim sentence). The publisher states these policies were last updated September 2019. · Sep 9, 2026
The two totals: Derived by CAMPANAC by adding the agency’s own published nightly rate to recreation.gov’s own published reservation fee. Both components are cited above; the addition is ours and is shown only where every component is known. · Sep 9, 2026
Who keeps the booking fee: Recreation.gov facility policy text, Dead Swede Campground (facility 234221) · Not on the national policy page. This is agency policy text recreation.gov publishes on individual campground pages; this site holds it verbatim on 45 active campgrounds (campground_rules.cancellation_description, scripts/load-facility-rules.mjs). · Sep 9, 2026
The contract: Reservation Gods: Who Stole Our Campsites and Sold Them Back to Us, More Than Just Parks, April 2025 · Apr 1, 2025
Source: National Park Service API · Aug 24, 2026

record Aug 24, 2026 · How we know all this

Seen something wrong here? Tell us.

Getting there

the map and the coordinate · the phone number
Coordinate38.04472, -75.23139
The phone4106411441

Where it is

Source: National Park Service API · Aug 24, 2026

The weather

the next four days · the thirty-year normal

Next four days, and the thirty-year normal

Forecast

Today74°Patchy Fog then Mostly Sunny14% rain
Tonight55°Rain Showers Likely60% rain
Saturday58°Rain Showers Likely68% rain
Saturday Night50°Partly Cloudy

NWS forecast for Chincoteague, VA

Source: National Weather Service, AKQ forecast office · Oct 16, 2026

Typical weather

Typical October night 53°F, day 72°F.

Coldest month of the year: typical January night 31°F, below freezing. Bring a bag rated colder than that, and expect ice in the water bottle.

100°32°20°

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.

Measured at: ASSATEAGUE, MD (USC00180335), 2 miles away and at about the same elevation
Source: NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, U.S. Climate Normals 1991-2020, monthly normals · Sep 8, 2026

The land, and who answers for it

what threatens it · who answers for it

What threatens this place

Watch

You’re camping on ground somebody wants. We track the threats and the comment deadlines.

Source: MTJP Threatened Lands map · Oct 3, 2026

Who answers for this land

Andy Harris, official portrait

Back Country Camping - State Line is in Maryland’s 1st congressional district. Its representative, Andy Harris (R), votes on the laws that decide what happens to this land. Public-lands grade so far: F. See every public-lands vote →

Seen something wrong here? Tell us.

Source: U.S. Census district boundaries and the MTJP Congressional Public Lands Score

How we know

every fact on this page, and where it came from
Right now: The agency lists it open right now.
Season: National Park Service API · Aug 24, 2026
Elevation: USGS 3DEP elevation point query at this campground’s coordinate · Sep 7, 2026
Night sky: VIIRS Day/Night Band annual cloud-free composite, VNL V2 2024 (Earth Observation Group, Colorado School of Mines), read at the published coordinate: 0.26 mcd/m² of artificial all-sky glow, ranked against the 62 rated federal campgrounds in Maryland · Sep 8, 2026
Sky-glow model: Duriscoe, Anderson, Luginbuhl and Baugh (2018), a simplified model of all-sky artificial sky glow derived from VIIRS Day/Night band data, the National Park Service sky-glow model
Cell signal: the Park Service’s own campground description, read as text by CAMPANAC. None of this is a measurement. It’s what the land manager published about the place, and phones, carriers and weather all disagree with each other; treat it as a warning, not a promise.
Nearest town: U.S. Census Bureau TIGER/Line 2024 places, measured by CAMPANAC to the town boundary; population is the ACS 2020-2024 5-year estimate · Sep 9, 2026