Backbone Horse Campground
Reservable everywhere but bookable nowhere.Ask the agency →
- Right now
- Nobody has saidNo season, no closure, no bookings to read
- A night
- $15From, per site
- Sites
- 1None on recreation.gov
The place
the agency’s own description · what’s there · 1 notices
In the agency’s own words
Backbone Horse Campground is a small, semi-primitive campground designed primarily for campers or picnickers that bring horses with them.
What the agency tells you
-Open year round for hiking -Campground is open from Memorial Day through November. -All trails designated for horses are closed to horseback riding from March 15th to May 1st. This is due to muddy trail conditions and the increased potential for erosion and trail damage. -All campsites are available on a first come first serve basis. -Sites #5-9 are reserved for horseback users from Memorial Day to Columbus Day. -Remaining sites can be used by both non-horse users and horse users. -Camping rules: Maximum stay is 14 days in any 30-day period. Dogs must be on a leash at all times. Quiet Hours are 10:00 PM to 6:00 AM. Check out time is 2:00 PM -There is a nonpotable hydrant along the trail north of the campground for watering livestock only. -Three vault toilets available.
Tents and rigs
- Sites
- 1
- Hookups
- None
- Accessible sites
- None listed
Around the campground
- Fall color · reported 8 days ago, 36 km away
- Patchy color
Nothing on the booking system
recreation.gov lists none of the 1 campsites the agency files here. Whatever these sites are, a reservation isn’t how you get one.
No availability snapshot inside the last 36 hours, so this page draws nothing rather than ageing a reading into fiction.
Watch for a cancellation
Full? Watch it.
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We read recreation.gov once an hour, at 40 minutes past, and write the first time a site in your window is free for the nights you asked for.
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 · 12
What you actually pay
Derived by CAMPANAC: the agency’s published rate for this season, $15 a night, plus one $8 recreation.gov reservation fee for the booking. A weekend here means Friday and Saturday night, booked once. Optional charges (an extra vehicle, a second tent, a dump-station fee) are listed separately and aren’t in this total.
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 · 5
rules read Sep 9, 2026 · rates Sep 10, 2026 · How we know all this
The sites
1 sites
All 1 sites
| S&P | Standard | type not stated |
Getting there
the map and the coordinate
Where it is
The weather
the next four days · the thirty-year normal
Next four days, and the thirty-year normal
Forecast
NWS forecast for Burdett, NY
Typical weather
Typical October night 39°F, day 58°F.
Coldest month of the year: typical January night 14°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 · a letter you can send
Who answers for this land
Backbone Horse Campground is in New York’s 24th congressional district. Its representative, Claudia Tenney (R), votes on the laws that decide what happens to this land. Public-lands grade so far: F. See every public-lands vote →
Who can change it · 3
The agency’s own record marks Backbone Horse Campground reservable, and recreation.gov lists none of its campsites. The draft asks why, and what it would take to fix it.
- The member who votes the moneyClaudia TenneyU.S. Representative · New York’s 24th district
- Your senator, on the same appropriationCharles E. SchumerU.S. Senator · New York
- Your senator, on the same appropriationKirsten E. GillibrandU.S. Senator · New York
Read the draft, or change the wording
Asks them to put the same question to the agency in writing.
Subject Backbone Horse Campground is reservable and not bookable
Dear Claudia Tenney, I’m a constituent in New York’s 24th district. Backbone Horse Campground, Finger Lakes National Forest, New York is a federal campground the U.S. Forest Service records as reservable, and recreation.gov lists none of its 1 campsites, in any month asked. I’m asking you to put one question to the U.S. Forest Service in writing: why isn’t Backbone Horse Campground on the booking system, and what would it take to put it there? Road trips and camping on public land are part of how this country knows itself. It’s where a lot of people meet the place they live in for the first time, and it has never been something you had to be well off, or well organised six months in advance, to do. Sent about Backbone Horse Campground (Finger Lakes National Forest, New York) via campanac.com
Asks them to put the same question to the agency in writing.
Subject Backbone Horse Campground is reservable and not bookable
Dear Charles E. Schumer, I’m a constituent in New York. Backbone Horse Campground, Finger Lakes National Forest, New York is a federal campground the U.S. Forest Service records as reservable, and recreation.gov lists none of its 1 campsites, in any month asked. I’m asking you to put one question to the U.S. Forest Service in writing: why isn’t Backbone Horse Campground on the booking system, and what would it take to put it there? Road trips and camping on public land are part of how this country knows itself. It’s where a lot of people meet the place they live in for the first time, and it has never been something you had to be well off, or well organised six months in advance, to do. Sent about Backbone Horse Campground (Finger Lakes National Forest, New York) via campanac.com
Asks them to put the same question to the agency in writing.
Subject Backbone Horse Campground is reservable and not bookable
Dear Kirsten E. Gillibrand, I’m a constituent in New York. Backbone Horse Campground, Finger Lakes National Forest, New York is a federal campground the U.S. Forest Service records as reservable, and recreation.gov lists none of its 1 campsites, in any month asked. I’m asking you to put one question to the U.S. Forest Service in writing: why isn’t Backbone Horse Campground on the booking system, and what would it take to put it there? Road trips and camping on public land are part of how this country knows itself. It’s where a lot of people meet the place they live in for the first time, and it has never been something you had to be well off, or well organised six months in advance, to do. Sent about Backbone Horse Campground (Finger Lakes National Forest, New York) via campanac.com