CAMPANAC.Powered by public lands intelligenceMore Than Just Parks
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U.S. Forest Service · Nicolet National Forest · WI

Boot Lake Recreation Area

5Heads up5 fires, nearest 21 mi
Wildfire
Bee fire · 21 mi away · 0 acres · updated Oct 11, 2026
Wildfire
Strike fire · 32 mi away · 0 acres · updated Oct 14, 2026
Wildfire
Blackberry fire · 33 mi away · 3 acres · updated Oct 16, 2026
Wildfire
Memory fire · 40 mi away · 0 acres · updated Oct 11, 2026
Wildfire
Marsh 1 fire · 47 mi away · 0 acres · updated Oct 16, 2026
Fires: NIFC/IRWIN via MTJP wildfire tracker · Oct 16, 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 directionsWhat it costs, and the rules
Right now
OpenThe agency lists it open
Season
May 2 – November 30Open May 2 through November 30
Drawn from the record · 1,320 ft · 75% tree cover · Boot Lake within reach · Bortle 3 sky
1,320 ftElevation
279 ftWater · Boot Lake
22.4 miSE of Crandon, WI
75%Tree cover
Bortle 3Night sky · 63rd darkest of 70 in WI
Open May 2 through November 30Today

The place

the agency’s own description · what’s there

In the agency’s own words

This campground overlooks a scenic 263-acre lake. Bask in the sun on the beautiful beach and then take a relaxing dip in the lake, or enjoy the fishing. Boot Lake contains walleye, northern pike, bass, musky and panfish. In addition, several nearby streams offer excellent trout fishing, and the Wolf River provides fishing, rafting, and first-class canoeing opportunities. Generally, use at this popular campground is heavy throughout the summer.

Source: USFS Enterprise Data Warehouse · Aug 24, 2026

Around the campground

On the water
Lake, River, Creek, Beach
Fall color · reported 13 days ago, 11 km away
Near peak
Source: Stated in the agency description
Fall color: More Than Just Parks foliage tracker, joined to this campground by distance (11 km) · Oct 4, 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 · 9

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.
Individual campsite fee is $18, or $9 with the use of an Interagency pass (access or senior).
The interagency pass applies only to the fee for the campsite physically occupied by the pass holder, not to any additional fees or campsite(s) occupied by members of the pass holder's party.
There is a $5 day use pass for the boat landing and beach.
This does not apply to registered campers.
The Forest also has an annual pass available for $30.
To learn more visit https://www.fs.usda.gov/main/cnnf/passes-permits/recreation .
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
Coordinate45.26840, -88.64560

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

Overnight28°Clear
Saturday54°Sunny
Saturday Night36°Clear
Sunday60°Sunny

NWS forecast for Townsend, WI

Source: National Weather Service, GRB forecast office · Oct 17, 2026

Typical weather

Typical October night 34°F, day 55°F.

Coldest night of the open season: typical November night 23°F, below freezing. Bring a bag rated colder than that, and expect ice in the water bottle.

90°32°0°

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.

Measured at: LAKEWOOD 3 NE, WI (USC00474523), 9 miles away and 124 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

What threatens this place

developing
Roadless
Wheeler Lake Islands5 acres · 9 mi · inventoried roadless area

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

Source: MTJP Threatened Lands map · Sep 28, 2026

Who answers for this land

Tony Wied, official portrait

Boot Lake Recreation Area is in Wisconsin’s 8th congressional district. Its representative, Tony Wied (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: USFS Enterprise Data Warehouse · 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: 0.19 mcd/m² of artificial all-sky glow, ranked against the 70 rated federal campgrounds in Wisconsin · 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 (11 km) · Oct 4, 2026
Reported by: USA National Phenology Network (Nature's Notebook), reported near peak · Oct 4, 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 place of any size: Townsend, WI, 3.8 mi SW (a census designated place). Straight line.
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