Blacksmith Fork Guard Station
We don’t think it should be. Every campground should hold some sites for whoever drives up.Tell your representative →
- Right now
- Taking bookingsSites offered on 30 of the next 30 nights read 15:38 UTC
- Sites
- 1All of them booked ahead
The place
the agency’s own description · what’s there · 10 notices
In the agency’s own words
Blacksmith Fork Guard Station is located in the Cache National Forest, approximately 11 miles east of Hyrum, in northern Utah. The Guard Station was constructed by the Civilian Conservation Corps in 1934 as part of the New Deal Program. Early Forest Service stations were typically spaced a "days ride by horseback" from each other. The Uinta-Wasatch-Cache National Forests has decided to rent the cabin to the public so visitors can enjoy a rustic experience similar to that of early Forest Rangers and their families. Keep reading
Recreation
A variety of hiking, biking, horseback riding and off-road vehicle trails crisscross the surrounding area. The cabin is less than one mile from the Richards Hollow Trailhead and Friendship Campground.
Facilities
The Guard Station complex can sleep 5 people inside the cabin and no more than 4 tents outside. There is also room for a small travel trailer in the driveway. No vehicles are permitted on the grass.
Natural Features
The small green and white cabin sits on the bank of the Left Hand Fork of the Blacksmith Fork River at an elevation of 5,400 feet. It is surrounded by box elder and oak trees with the steep canyon wall behind the cabin covered in Douglas fir trees.
Nearby Attractions
Hardware Ranch Wildlife Management Area is approximately 5-miles southeast along the main fork of the Blacksmith Fork River and State Route 101.
What the agency tells you
Call the Logan Ranger Station at (435) 755-3620 Monday-Friday 8:00 to 4:30, to confirm lock combination.
Restrooms are located along a Forest Service Road and shared with other Forest users.
Seasonal road is closed to wheeled vehicles from 12/1 through 4/15. Access is limited to over-snow vehicles during this time.
Everything else this campground posts · 7
Check in 2:00 PM, check out 11:00 AM.
Please bring your own cleaning supplies! Sanitizing is the responsibility of those staying in the cabin.
There are no electrical, water, or sewer hookups available at this location.
There is no drinking water available at the cabin. The nearest water source is located in the city of Hyrum.
The area is common for rattlesnakes.
Forest Service Road 245 is open to all motorized uses during summer months. Traffic will include full sized vehicles, side by sides, off highway vehicles, four wheelers and motorcycles .
Firewood may not be available.
Tents and rigs
- Sites
- 1 · 1 cabin
- Hookups
- None
- Longest rig
- 30 ft
- Accessible sites
- None listed
- Pets
- Allowed
- Campfires
- Allowed, barring fire bans
- Shade
- Every site
Facilities
- Toilets
- Vault Toilets
- VAULT TOILETS on 1 of 1 campsite records
Around the campground
- On the water
- River
- Biking
- Fishing
- Hiking
- Horseback riding
- Hunting
- Night sky · 403rd darkest of 458 in UT
- Bortle 4
- Fall color · reported 9 days ago, 21 km away
- Past peak
Full this Saturdayread 15:38 UTC
How full the weekend is nationally.
OpenBooked
The one site on offer is taken this Saturday. 1 is free on Thu, Oct 22. read 15:38 UTC Why the weekend fills and the week doesn’t
Watch for a cancellation
Watch this campground
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.
We make nothing when you book. The link goes straight to the government.
Every line of the receipt · 12
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 · 5
recreation.gov availability, read 15:38 UTC · rules read Sep 9, 2026 · rates Sep 10, 2026 · How we know all this
The sites
1 sites · the site map
All 1 sites
Toilet distances are OpenStreetMap’s, measured for 1 of the 1 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. 1 of the 1 sites listed carry one, and a site whose type has no published rate sits out of the price rather than being called free.
| BLACKSMITH FORK GUARD STATION | Blacksmith Fk GS | cabin nonelectric | 30 ft | 88 ft | 73 ft | $75 |
Getting there
the map and the coordinate · the agency’s directions · the phone number
Where it is
Friendship CampgroundCache National Forest · 0.5 miSpring CampgroundCache National Forest · 1.1 miSpring Campground (UT)Cache National Forest · 1.1 mi
Pioneer Campground (UT)Cache National Forest · 2.3 mi
Shenoah Picnic AreaCache National Forest · 2.4 mi
Spring Hollow CampgroundCache National Forest · 6.8 miFrom Logan, Utah, drive south on US 89 for approximately 1 mile then merge left onto State Route 165. Travel south for about 5.8 miles then turn left onto State Route 101 and follow it east up Blacksmith Fork Canyon for approximately 9 miles. Turn left into Left Hand Fork Canyon and travel approximately 3 miles on the improved gravel road to the Guard Station.
The weather
the thirty-year normal
Next four days, and the thirty-year normal
Typical weather
Typical October night 39°F, day 61°F.
Coldest month of the year: typical January night 18°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
what threatens it · who answers for it · a letter you can send
Roadless country, and what’s coming for it
You’re camping on ground somebody wants. We track the threats and the comment deadlines.
Who answers for this land
Blacksmith Fork Guard Station is in Utah’s 1st congressional district. Its representative, Blake Moore (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
Two offices, two different asks. The draft to the agency asks it to set aside a published share of the sites here for whoever drives up. The draft to Congress asks why that share is zero and presses for a published minimum at the campgrounds it funds.
- The member who votes the moneyBlake D. MooreU.S. Representative · Utah’s 1st district
- Your senator, on the same appropriationJohn R. CurtisU.S. Senator · Utah
- Your senator, on the same appropriationMike LeeU.S. Senator · Utah
Read the draft, or change the wording
For the camper who turned up, or tried to book, and couldn’t get in. Every draft is written from this campground’s own record (its agency, its unit, its site count and its own weekend) and the buttons above copy whichever wording is selected here.
Asks them to put the question to the agency in writing, and to press for a published minimum share of walk-up sites across the campgrounds they fund.
Subject Walk-up camping at Blacksmith Fork Guard Station, Cache National Forest, Utah
Dear Blake D. Moore, I’m a constituent in Utah’s 1st district. I tried to camp at Blacksmith Fork Guard Station, Cache National Forest, Utah, and couldn’t. All 1 sites at Blacksmith Fork Guard Station are reservable, and the agency's own record lists none held back for somebody who drives up. On Saturday, October 17, the one site recreation.gov was offering there was already booked. 1,623 of the 7,647 federal campgrounds in this country still keep at least some sites for whoever arrives first. Blacksmith Fork Guard Station keeps none, and that’s a choice somebody made rather than a rule. I’m not asking you to run Blacksmith Fork Guard Station. I’m asking you to put it to the U.S. Forest Service in writing: why is the share of first-come sites there zero, and what would a published minimum share cost? Please press for that minimum at the federal campgrounds you fund. The people who open these campgrounds, collect the fees and keep the water running are seasonal positions. At GS-5, base pay plus the government's own 36.25% benefit factor, one costs about $47,414 a year. One percent of the $13.3 billion the USS Gerald R. Ford cost to procure would pay for about 2,800 of them for a year. Both figures are the government's own (a Congressional Research Service report and an OPM pay table), and I’m glad to send them. Sent about Blacksmith Fork Guard Station (Cache National Forest, Utah) via campanac.com
Asks them to put the question to the agency in writing, and to press for a published minimum share of walk-up sites across the campgrounds they fund.
Subject Walk-up camping at Blacksmith Fork Guard Station, Cache National Forest, Utah
Dear John R. Curtis, I’m a constituent in Utah. I tried to camp at Blacksmith Fork Guard Station, Cache National Forest, Utah, and couldn’t. All 1 sites at Blacksmith Fork Guard Station are reservable, and the agency's own record lists none held back for somebody who drives up. On Saturday, October 17, the one site recreation.gov was offering there was already booked. 1,623 of the 7,647 federal campgrounds in this country still keep at least some sites for whoever arrives first. Blacksmith Fork Guard Station keeps none, and that’s a choice somebody made rather than a rule. I’m not asking you to run Blacksmith Fork Guard Station. I’m asking you to put it to the U.S. Forest Service in writing: why is the share of first-come sites there zero, and what would a published minimum share cost? Please press for that minimum at the federal campgrounds you fund. The people who open these campgrounds, collect the fees and keep the water running are seasonal positions. At GS-5, base pay plus the government's own 36.25% benefit factor, one costs about $47,414 a year. One percent of the $13.3 billion the USS Gerald R. Ford cost to procure would pay for about 2,800 of them for a year. Both figures are the government's own (a Congressional Research Service report and an OPM pay table), and I’m glad to send them. Sent about Blacksmith Fork Guard Station (Cache National Forest, Utah) via campanac.com
Asks them to put the question to the agency in writing, and to press for a published minimum share of walk-up sites across the campgrounds they fund.
Subject Walk-up camping at Blacksmith Fork Guard Station, Cache National Forest, Utah
Dear Mike Lee, I’m a constituent in Utah. I tried to camp at Blacksmith Fork Guard Station, Cache National Forest, Utah, and couldn’t. All 1 sites at Blacksmith Fork Guard Station are reservable, and the agency's own record lists none held back for somebody who drives up. On Saturday, October 17, the one site recreation.gov was offering there was already booked. 1,623 of the 7,647 federal campgrounds in this country still keep at least some sites for whoever arrives first. Blacksmith Fork Guard Station keeps none, and that’s a choice somebody made rather than a rule. I’m not asking you to run Blacksmith Fork Guard Station. I’m asking you to put it to the U.S. Forest Service in writing: why is the share of first-come sites there zero, and what would a published minimum share cost? Please press for that minimum at the federal campgrounds you fund. The people who open these campgrounds, collect the fees and keep the water running are seasonal positions. At GS-5, base pay plus the government's own 36.25% benefit factor, one costs about $47,414 a year. One percent of the $13.3 billion the USS Gerald R. Ford cost to procure would pay for about 2,800 of them for a year. Both figures are the government's own (a Congressional Research Service report and an OPM pay table), and I’m glad to send them. Sent about Blacksmith Fork Guard Station (Cache National Forest, Utah) via campanac.com