Brownlee
- Right now
- Listed not openA database flag with no reason and no date
- A night
- $10From, per site
- Sites
- 1211 on recreation.gov
The place
the agency’s own description · what’s there
In the agency’s own words
This 11-unit campground is located in Ponderosa pine trees offering shade on a hot summer day. Sites are located a few miles off the main Hwy 71, so it is peaceful and quiet. This location is available on a first-come, first-served basis only. Visitors are required to physically arrive at the campground to purchase and claim a site. Once on-site, you may be able to pay for your campsite(s) by scanning a QR code using the Recreation.gov mobile app, and the Scan and Pay feature. If this option is available, you will need to first download the free Recreation.gov mobile app https://www.recreation.gov/mobile-app prior to your arrival as some remote areas have limited or no cellular service. Keep reading
Facilities
No hook-ups. Potable water for cooking and drinking is available on-site. Sixteen foot limit for RVs.
Tents and rigs
- Sites
- 12
- Hookups
- None
- Accessible sites
- None listed
- Pets
- Allowed
Facilities
- Drinking water
- Yes
- “…service. Facilities No hook-ups. Potable water for cooking and drinking is available on-site.…”
No reading yet, book on recreation.gov
recreation.gov lists 11 of the 12 campsites the agency files here. The rest aren’t on its booking system, so a reservation won’t get you 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.
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
Derived by CAMPANAC: the agency’s published rate for this season, $10 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
12 sites · the site map
All 12 sites
Toilet distances are OpenStreetMap’s, measured for 1 of the 12 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. 12 of the 12 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.
| Brownlee | 01 | standard nonelectric | $10 | ||
| Brownlee | 010 | standard nonelectric | $10 | ||
| Brownlee | 011 | standard nonelectric | $10 | ||
| Brownlee | 02 | standard nonelectric | $10 | ||
| Brownlee | 03 | standard nonelectric | $10 | ||
| Brownlee | 04 | standard nonelectric | $10 | ||
| Brownlee | 05 | standard nonelectric | $10 | ||
| Brownlee | 06 | standard nonelectric | $10 | ||
| Brownlee | 07 | standard nonelectric | $10 | ||
| Brownlee | 08 | standard nonelectric | $10 | ||
| Brownlee | 09 | standard nonelectric | $10 | ||
| Scan and Pay | Standard | type not stated | 164 ft | 1,912 ft | $10 |
Getting there
the map and the coordinate · the agency’s directions · the phone number
Where it is
Buck Park CabinPayette National Forest · 4.9 mi
Spring Creek CampgroundPayette National Forest · 13 miParadise CampgroundPayette National Forest · 15 mi
LaffertyPayette National Forest · 16 miKiwanis CampgroundPayette National Forest · 17 mi
Lake Fork CampgroundHells Canyon National Recreation Area · 19 miSixteen miles northwest of Cambridge on Hwy 71, one mile east on Road #044.
The weather
the thirty-year normal
Next four days, and the thirty-year normal
Typical weather
Typical October night 28°F, day 57°F.
Coldest month of the year: typical January night 13°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
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
Brownlee is in Idaho’s 1st congressional district. Its representative, Russ Fulcher (R), votes on the laws that decide what happens to this land. Public-lands grade so far: F. See every public-lands vote →