Birch Lake Campground
- Right now
- OpenThe agency lists it open
- A night
- $21From, per site
- Sites
- 31All of them booked ahead
- Season
- May 5 – October 21Open May 5 through October 21
The place
the agency’s own description · what’s there · 7 notices
In the agency’s own words
Birch Lake Campground is located in Superior National Forest near the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, about 13 miles from Ely, Minnesota. It is an ideal place to relax while enjoying fishing, boating and other recreational activities. Keep reading
Recreation
Fishing, boating and canoeing are popular on Birch Lake. Anglers can use the boat ramp or try their luck from shore to catch northern pike, perch, crappie and walleye. There are no horsepower limitations for boats on the lake. The shoreline is inviting for campers interested in canoeing. Families also enjoy berry picking during the summer and early fall months. View recreation guides and maps of hiking trails and canoe routes in the national forest.
Facilities
The campground features shaded campsites, each with a picnic table, tent pad and campfire ring with grill. Campsites are organized into two loops, all near the water and well-separated by dense forest. The north loop also has a group site to accommodate up to 45 people with eight back-in parking spurs and an open play area. The south loop has two camper cabins. These cabins are two room cabins with two sets of bunk beds (4 beds) in the back bedroom, and a main area with a table, chairs, and futon in the front room. The cabins sleep up to 6 persons and offer the indoor/outdoor camping experience with a front porch. A heater is provided for those cooler Minnesota nights. Please note: guests must supply their own linens and supplies; no electricity, water or indoor kitchen. Vault toilets and a hand pump for drinking water are provided, and firewood is available for purchase.
Natural Features
Birch Lake covers 7,628 acres and is one of a series of lakes in the area. The campground lies in aspen and birch forest. Birds and wildlife are abundant. Superior National Forest, located in northeastern Minnesota's Arrowhead Region, is comprised of 3-million acres. The forest spans 150 miles along the United States-Canada border.
Nearby Attractions
Numerous outdoor recreation opportunities lie within Superior National Forest's 77 lake accesses, 13 fishing piers, 10 swimming beaches and 22 picnic areas. The forest is also home to three scenic byways. Campers can also explore the nearby Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. Over 1-million acres in size, the Boundary Waters extends nearly 150 miles along the United States-Canada border and contains over 1,200 miles of canoe routes, 12 hiking trails and over 2,000 designated campsites. Contact Info For facility specific information, please call (218) 365-2963.
What the agency tells you
Off-road and all-terrain vehicles are not allowed during camping season.
During the walk-in season, please contact the local USFS for information.
Please Note: One RV with tow vehicle per single site or one vehicle per tent site. Most sites can accommodate 1 extra vehicle that is not included with the reservation fee. Extra vehicle will be charged a per night fee and collected at the campground if you did not pay for the Extra Vehicle Add On.
Everything else this campground posts · 4
Reserved Sites will be held until check out time (NOON) the day following your arrival date. Sites must be occupied by the checkout time of that following day to hold a reservation or the site will be forfeited and released to other guests. Once your reservation start date has begun, neither the Recreation.gov Contact Center nor the campground manager will be able to modify your reservation.
Refunds: Refund requests made through www.recreation.gov will be charged a $10 processing fee. This fee is retained by the reservation service contractor along with the non-refundable reservation fee. All requests for the return of the non-refundable reservation fee and the cancellation fee will be declined by the campground concessionaire as they did not receive these fees (these are the fees retained by the reservation contractor, a different entity).
Click here to learn more about Superior National Forest Superior National Forest
Don't move firewood: To limit the spread of invasive tree-killing pests, firewood from outside the area is not permitted. Some states have quarantines and may confiscate your firewood. Please help protect our forests from invasive species by obtaining your firewood at or near your camping destination and burning it on-site. Visit dontmovefirewood.org for more information.
Tents and rigs
- Sites
- 31 · 1 group, 2 cabin
- Hookups
- None
- Longest rig
- 66 ft
- Accessible sites
- 4
- Pets
- Allowed at 29 of 31 sites
- Campfires
- Allowed, barring fire bans
- Shade
- Every site
Facilities
- Toilets
- Vault Toilets
- “…no electricity, water or indoor kitchen. Vault toilets and a hand pump for drinking water are provided,…”
- Drinking water
- Yes
- “…or indoor kitchen. Vault toilets and a hand pump for drinking water are provided, and firewood is…”
- Boat ramp
- Yes
- Firewood
- Sold here
Around the campground
- On the water
- Lake, Beach
- Biking
- Boating
- Fishing
- Hiking
- Hunting
- Swimming
- Wildlife viewing
- Night sky · 44th darkest of 77 in MN
- Bortle 2
No reading yet, book on recreation.gov
Every site here is reservable, and the record lists none held back for anyone who drives up.
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.
One email when a night opens, plus More Than Just Parks dispatches. Unsubscribe any time.
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.
Tell me when the season opens
Watch for the season to open
One email when the season goes on sale, plus More Than Just Parks dispatches. Unsubscribe any time.
We check once an hour, at 40 minutes past, and write the first time the agency has that season on sale.
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.
We make nothing when you book. The link goes straight to the government.
Every line of the receipt · 13
What you actually pay
Derived by CAMPANAC: the agency’s published rate for this season, $21 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 Oct 1, 2026 · How we know all this
The sites
32 records · which ones have room · the site map
The sites, ranked
from 32 mapped sitesAll 32 records
The price is derived by CAMPANAC, not published per site: the per-night rate this campground publishes for each site’s own site type. 31 of the 32 sites listed carry one, and a site whose type has no published rate sits out of the price rather than being called free.
Measured shade is NLCD Tree Canopy Cover 2024 (USDA Forest Service / MRLC) read at the site’s own coordinate, 27% canopy or more, and only for the sites the agency gave no Shade value. It never changes the agency’s own shaded count beside it.
| North | 001 | standard nonelectric | 45 ft | yes | 115 ft | 135 ft | $21 |
| North | 002 | standard nonelectric | 49 ft | yes | 96 ft | 186 ft | $21 |
| North | 003 | standard nonelectric | 48 ft | 96 ft | 162 ft | $21 | |
| North | 004 | standard nonelectric | 58 ft | 49 ft | 120 ft | $21 | |
| North | 005 | standard nonelectric | 54 ft | 49 ft | 155 ft | $21 | |
| North | 006 | standard nonelectric | 38 ft | 100 ft | 155 ft | $21 | |
| North | 007 | standard nonelectric | 54 ft | 53 ft | 169 ft | $21 | |
| North | 008 | standard nonelectric | 53 ft | 53 ft | 218 ft | $21 | |
| North | 009 | standard nonelectric | 45 ft | 98 ft | 249 ft | $21 | |
| North | 010 | standard nonelectric | 42 ft | 58 ft | 158 ft | $21 | |
| North | 011 HOST | host pad | 53 ft | 58 ft | 190 ft | $21 | |
| North | 012 | standard nonelectric | 40 ft | 72 ft | 132 ft | $21 | |
| North | 013 | standard nonelectric | 50 ft | 62 ft | 183 ft | $21 | |
| North | 014 | standard nonelectric | 66 ft | 62 ft | 173 ft | $21 | |
| North | 015 | group standard nonelectric | 64 ft | 345 ft | 186 ft | $65 | |
| South | 017 | standard nonelectric | 40 ft | 108 ft | 181 ft | $21 | |
| South | 018 | standard nonelectric | 56 ft | 69 ft | 106 ft | $21 | |
| South | 019 | standard nonelectric | 39 ft | 69 ft | 89 ft | $21 | |
| South | 020 | standard nonelectric | 55 ft | 86 ft | 166 ft | $21 | |
| South | 021 | standard nonelectric | 48 ft | 78 ft | 248 ft | $21 | |
| South | 023 | standard nonelectric | 50 ft | 49 ft | 276 ft | $21 | |
| South | 024 | standard nonelectric | 49 ft | 49 ft | 232 ft | $21 | |
| South | 025 | standard nonelectric | 14 ft | 76 ft | 178 ft | $21 | |
| South | 026 | standard nonelectric | 54 ft | 76 ft | 207 ft | $21 | |
| South | 027 | standard nonelectric | 48 ft | 101 ft | 148 ft | $21 | |
| South | 028 | standard nonelectric | 48 ft | 97 ft | 169 ft | $21 | |
| South | 029 | standard nonelectric | 30 ft | 61 ft | 141 ft | $21 | |
| South | 030 | standard nonelectric | 57 ft | 61 ft | 201 ft | $21 | |
| South | 031 | standard nonelectric | 36 ft | 115 ft | 348 ft | $21 | |
| South | 032 | standard nonelectric | 21 ft | 115 ft | 457 ft | $21 | |
| South | Popple Cabin | cabin nonelectric | yes | 78 ft | 323 ft | $95 | |
| South | Tamarak Cabin | cabin nonelectric | yes | 80 ft | 249 ft | $95 |
The agency files 1 more record here that isn’t a site for the night. It names it a host pad. It’s in the table above, marked for what it is, and it isn’t counted as a site.
OpenStreetMap has no toilet mapped within 1 km of this campground, so no site here carries a toilet distance. That’s a gap in the map, not a finding about the campground.
25 of 32 listed
Getting there
the map and the coordinate · the agency’s directions · the phone number
Where it is
South Kawishiwi RiverSuperior National Forest · 4.7 miSand Lake Rustic CampgroundSuperior National Forest · 13 mi
Fall LakeSuperior National Forest · 14 mi
McDougal Lake CampgroundSuperior National Forest · 14 miDumbell Lake Backcountry Campsites17 miT-Lake Backcountry Campsite17 miFrom Ely, Minnesota, travel about 8 miles south on State Highway 1 toward Lake Superior, until Forest Road 429 (Little Lake Road). Turn right on Forest Road 429 and continue 4 miles to the campground entrance road. Turn left onto the campground road and continue 1 mile 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 Babbitt, MN
Typical weather
Typical October night 31°F, day 50°F.
Coldest night of the open season: typical October night 31°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 moreOutside the published season
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
what threatens it · who answers for it
What threatens this place
You’re camping on ground somebody wants. We track the threats and the comment deadlines.
Who answers for this land
Birch Lake Campground is in Minnesota’s 8th congressional district. Its representative, Pete Stauber (R), votes on the laws that decide what happens to this land. Public-lands grade so far: F. See every public-lands vote →