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U.S. Forest Service · Santa Fe National Forest · NM

Big Tesuque Campground

1Heads up1 fire 9.9 mi away
Wildfire
Frijoles fire · 9.9 mi away · 15,956 acres · 90% contained · updated Sep 24, 2026
Fires: NIFC/IRWIN via MTJP wildfire tracker · Oct 6, 2026
The agency doesn’t say how you get a siteIts record carries no access type, so treat it as a place to phone before you drive.
Get directions
Right now
Nobody has saidNo season, no closure, no bookings to read
Drawn from the record · 9,700 ft · 43% tree cover · water within reach · Bortle 4 sky
9,700 ftElevation
87 ftWater · an unnamed stream
4.6 miNE of Tesuque, NM
43%Tree cover
Bortle 4Night sky · 145th darkest of 164 in NM

The place

the agency’s own description · what’s there

In the agency’s own words

Big Tesuque is a travel-in campground not conducive to trailer or RV camping. There are 10 units, picnic tables and grills, and vaulted toilets in the parking lot. There is no potable water and no campground host. The entire area is very scenic, and NM 475 is designated as the Santa Fe Scenic Byway. Because of the large stands of aspen, the area is very busy, especially in the fall aspen viewing season. both above and below Big Tesuque Campground, including hiking, biking, and picnic areas. Winter activities include both nordic and alpine skiing. Tesuque is pronounced "tes-sue-kay"

Source: USFS Enterprise Data Warehouse · Aug 24, 2026

Facilities

Toilets
Vault Toilets
“…10 units, picnic tables and grills, and vaulted toilets in the parking lot. There is no potable water and…”
Drinking water
None, bring your own
“…and vaulted toilets in the parking lot. There is no potable water and no campground host. The entire area is very…”
Source: read from the agency description, shown above · Sep 12, 2026

Around the campground

Fall color · reported 5 days ago, 0.1 km away
Peak color
Source: More Than Just Parks foliage tracker, joined to this campground by distance (0.1 km) · Oct 11, 2026

Phone before you drive

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.

Booking window6 months outBooking opens 6 months ahead; today unlocks arrivals through April 16, 2027. The agency publishes no reservable season in the record we hold, so the window may close earlier than that.recreation.gov
Runs itU.S. Forest Servicethe agency’s record
Directions
Every line of the receipt · 3

What you actually pay

The sign priceU.S. Forest Service
The U.S. Forest 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.
The booking feerecreation.gov
We hold no recreation.gov booking record for this campground, so we can’t say whether a booking fee applies.
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: USFS Enterprise Data Warehouse · 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
Coordinate35.76917, -105.80861

Where it is

Source: USFS Enterprise Data Warehouse · Aug 24, 2026

The weather

the next four days · the thirty-year normal

Next four days, and the thirty-year normal

Forecast

This Afternoon50°Sunny
Tonight27°Mostly Clear
Saturday52°Sunny
Saturday Night33°Partly Cloudy2% rain

NWS forecast for Tesuque, NM

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

Typical weather

Typical October night 26°F, day 57°F.

Coldest month of the year: typical January night 9°F, below freezing. Bring a bag rated colder than that, and expect ice in the water bottle.

80°32°0°

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: LOS ALAMOS 13 W, NM (USW00003062), 40 miles away and 984 ft lower
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

Roadless country, and what’s coming for it

Roadless
Tesuque Creek810 acres · 1 mi · inventoried roadless area
Roadless
Black Canyon1,922 acres · 2 mi · inventoried roadless area
Roadless
Juan de Gabaldon Grant8,023 acres · 3 mi · inventoried roadless area

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

Source: USFS Inventoried Roadless Areas via MTJP Roadless Map · Jul 29, 2026

Who answers for this land

Teresa Leger Fernandez, official portrait

Big Tesuque Campground is in New Mexico’s 3rd congressional district. Its representative, Teresa Leger Fernandez (D), votes on the laws that decide what happens to this land. Public-lands grade so far: A+. 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: U.S. Forest Service publishes no season and no closure for this campground, and it takes no bookings we can read. That’s a gap in the record and not a locked gate.
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: 0.37 mcd/m² of artificial all-sky glow, ranked against the 164 rated federal campgrounds in New Mexico · 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
Fall color: More Than Just Parks foliage tracker, joined to this campground by distance (0.1 km) · Oct 11, 2026
Reported by: iNaturalist fall color observations, reported peak color · Oct 11, 2026
Cell signal: the Forest 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