Buttermilk
- Right now
- OpenInside the published season, our reading; a database flag says not open
- A night
- $25–$50Across the site types the agency prices
- Sites
- 5521 on recreation.gov
- Season
- May 1Opens May 1. No closing date published.
The place
the agency’s own description · what’s there · 7 notices
In the agency’s own words
Buttermilk Campground is located approximately 30 miles southwest of West Yellowstone, Montana and 32 miles north of Ashton, Idaho in beautiful Island Park, Idaho. Buttermilk sits next to Island Park Reservoir at an elevation of 6,200 feet. Visitors love Island Park for its world-class fishing and outstanding scenery and wildlife viewing opportunities. Keep reading
Recreation
The Island Park area is prized for its fishing; the Henry's Fork is known as one of the nation's best fly-fishing streams. Anglers cast for rainbow, cutthroat and brook trout and Kokanee salmon. Island Park Reservoir offers boating, water skiing and excellent fishing opportunities. The reservoir is used for irrigation so the water level recedes throughout the summer, but is generally useable all season. Henry's Lake is nearby. Hiking, biking, horseback riding and ATVing are popular activities. Many miles of trails are in the area, including the Continental Divide National Scenic Trail and the Nez Perce Trail. The Big Springs National Recreation Water Trail offers an approximately three-hour float or canoe trip through beautiful scenery. Wildlife, including moose, bald eagles and Sandhill cranes, are often seen along the trail.
Facilities
The campground contains two loops for single family camping and one loop for group camping, with a total of 55 sites. The large group site can accommodate up to 150 people. Site 038 has 15-amp electric hookups. Vault toilets and drinking water are provided. A concrete boat ramp with docks is located between the group camping and single family camping loops. Access to the campground is on a paved road but the interior loop roads and parking spurs are gravel.
Natural Features
Island Park is composed of two areas of extinct volcanic activity. The Henry's Fork Caldera sits inside the larger Island Park Caldera. The area is known for its dense forests of lodgepole pine, broad grassy meadows bursting with summer wildflowers and a wide variety of wildlife, including black and grizzly bears, moose, elk, deer, bald eagles, Sandhill cranes and much, much more. The campground is situated in a forest of lodgepole pine, which provides partial shade in some sites. Some areas of the campground are more open and sunny than others.
Nearby Attractions
Mesa Falls Scenic Byway is 13 miles south of the campground. This 28-mile road leads to scenic overlooks and trails at 110 foot Upper Mesa Falls and 85 foot Lower Mesa Falls. Harriman State Park is 15 miles south. The Henry's Fork meanders through the Harriman, offering excellent fishing. Over 20 miles of trails are available, and wildlife is abundant in this scenic park. Henry's Lake State Park is 18 miles north, offering fishing, a fish cleaning station and boat ramp. Yellowstone National Park's west entrance is just 29 miles north in the town of West Yellowstone, Montana. Visitors enjoy day-tripping to the park for unparalleled wildlife viewing and the beautiful and unique scenery.
What the agency tells you
Wildlife Caution
Idaho OHV Safety Message
A $7 fee for each extra vehicle will be collected at the campground
Everything else this campground posts · 4
No ATVs/OHVs allowed in the campground
This campground has first come, first served sites
Click here for more information on the Caribou-Targhee National Forest
Don't Move Firewood: Help prevent the spread of tree-killing pests in our national forests by obtaining firewood near your destination and burning it on-site. For more information visit dontmovefirewood.org.
Tents and rigs
- Sites
- 55 · 1 group
- Hookups
- 1 electric, 2 water
- Longest rig
- 50 ft
- Accessible sites
- None listed
- Pets
- Allowed
- Campfires
- Allowed, barring fire bans
- Shade
- Every site
Facilities
- Toilets
- Vault Toilets
- “…Site 038 has 15-amp electric hookups. Vault toilets and drinking water are provided. A concrete boat…”
- Drinking water
- Yes
- “…electric hookups. Vault toilets and drinking water are provided. A concrete boat ramp with docks is…”
- Boat ramp
- Yes
- Stay limit
- 14 nights
- recreation.gov facility rule maxStay
Around the campground
- On the water
- Reservoir, Lake, Creek, Meadow
- Biking
- Boating
- Fishing
- Hiking
- Hunting
- Water sports
- Wildlife viewing
- Night sky · 407th darkest of 523 in ID
- Bortle 3
No reading yet, book on recreation.gov
recreation.gov lists 21 of the 55 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.
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 · 18
What you actually pay
“A $7 fee for each extra vehicle will be collected at the campground” · the U.S. Forest Service’s own agency notice
Derived by CAMPANAC: the agency’s published rates for this season, $25–$50 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 · 6
rules read Sep 9, 2026 · rates Oct 1, 2026 · How we know all this
The sites
56 records · which ones have room · the site map
The sites, ranked
from 21 mapped sitesAll 56 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. 55 of the 56 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.
| B | 027 | standard nonelectric | 45 ft | 169 ft | 155 ft | $25–$50 | |
| B | 028 | standard nonelectric | 50 ft | 99 ft | 317 ft | $25–$50 | |
| B | 029 | standard nonelectric | 45 ft | 99 ft | 219 ft | $25–$50 | |
| B | 030 | standard nonelectric | 45 ft | 88 ft | 308 ft | $25–$50 | |
| B | 031 | standard nonelectric | 45 ft | 96 ft | 217 ft | $25–$50 | |
| B | 032 | standard nonelectric | 45 ft | 88 ft | 318 ft | $25–$50 | |
| B | 033 | standard nonelectric | 45 ft | 98 ft | 221 ft | $25–$50 | |
| B | 034 | standard nonelectric | 45 ft | 95 ft | 260 ft | $25–$50 | |
| B | 035 | standard nonelectric | 50 ft | 95 ft | 168 ft | $25–$50 | |
| B | 036 | standard nonelectric | 45 ft | 120 ft | 193 ft | $25–$50 | |
| B | 037 | standard nonelectric | 50 ft | 128 ft | 283 ft | $25–$50 | |
| B | 038 | standard electric | 50 ft | 15 amp | 182 ft | 437 ft | $32 |
| B | 039 | standard nonelectric | 45 ft | 168 ft | 539 ft | $25–$50 | |
| B | 040 | standard nonelectric | 50 ft | 124 ft | 391 ft | $25–$50 | |
| B | 041 | standard nonelectric | 45 ft | 69 ft | 469 ft | $25–$50 | |
| B | 042 | standard nonelectric | 45 ft | 69 ft | 402 ft | $25–$50 | |
| B | 043 | standard nonelectric | 45 ft | 85 ft | 440 ft | $25–$50 | |
| B | 044 | standard nonelectric | 45 ft | 85 ft | 515 ft | $25–$50 | |
| B | 045 | standard nonelectric | 45 ft | 113 ft | 426 ft | $25–$50 | |
| B | 046 | standard nonelectric | 45 ft | 113 ft | 539 ft | $25–$50 | |
| BUTTERMILK | GS1 | group standard nonelectric | 50 ft | 452 ft | 346 ft | $100 | |
| MANAGEMENT SITES | 001 | type not stated | 402 ft | $30 | |||
| MANAGEMENT SITES | 002 | type not stated | 343 ft | $30 | |||
| MANAGEMENT SITES | 003 | type not stated | 304 ft | $30 | |||
| MANAGEMENT SITES | 004 | type not stated | 400 ft | $30 | |||
| MANAGEMENT SITES | 005 | type not stated | 288 ft | $30 | |||
| MANAGEMENT SITES | 006 | type not stated | 373 ft | $30 | |||
| MANAGEMENT SITES | 007 | type not stated | 328 ft | $30 | |||
| MANAGEMENT SITES | 008 | type not stated | 387 ft | $30 | |||
| MANAGEMENT SITES | 009 | type not stated | 380 ft | $30 | |||
| MANAGEMENT SITES | 010 | type not stated | 469 ft | $30 | |||
| MANAGEMENT SITES | 011 | type not stated | 515 ft | $30 | |||
| MANAGEMENT SITES | 012 | type not stated | 442 ft | $30 | |||
| MANAGEMENT SITES | 013 | type not stated | 528 ft | $30 | |||
| MANAGEMENT SITES | 014 | type not stated | 436 ft | $30 | |||
| MANAGEMENT SITES | 015 | type not stated | 424 ft | $30 | |||
| MANAGEMENT SITES | 016 | type not stated | 341 ft | $30 | |||
| MANAGEMENT SITES | 017 | type not stated | 302 ft | $30 | |||
| MANAGEMENT SITES | 018 | type not stated | 166 ft | $30 | |||
| MANAGEMENT SITES | 019 | type not stated | 195 ft | $30 | |||
| MANAGEMENT SITES | 020 | type not stated | 204 ft | $30 | |||
| MANAGEMENT SITES | 021 | type not stated | 125 ft | $30 | |||
| MANAGEMENT SITES | 022 | type not stated | 201 ft | $30 | |||
| MANAGEMENT SITES | 023 | type not stated | 137 ft | $30 | |||
| MANAGEMENT SITES | 024 | type not stated | 200 ft | $30 | |||
| MANAGEMENT SITES | 025 | type not stated | 297 ft | $30 | |||
| MANAGEMENT SITES | 026 | type not stated | 263 ft | $30 | |||
| MANAGEMENT SITES | 047 | type not stated | 425 ft | $30 | |||
| MANAGEMENT SITES | 048 | type not stated | 389 ft | $30 | |||
| MANAGEMENT SITES | 049 | type not stated | 519 ft | $30 | |||
| MANAGEMENT SITES | 050 | type not stated | 487 ft | $30 | |||
| MANAGEMENT SITES | 051 | type not stated | 411 ft | $30 | |||
| MANAGEMENT SITES | 052 | type not stated | 483 ft | $30 | |||
| MANAGEMENT SITES | 053 | type not stated | 442 ft | $30 | |||
| MANAGEMENT SITES | 054 | type not stated | 539 ft | $30 | |||
| MANAGEMENT SITES | XXX | unnamed record | 45 ft | $30 |
The agency files 1 more record here that isn’t a site for the night. It types it MANAGEMENT rather than a campsite. 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 56 listed
Getting there
the map and the coordinate · the agency’s directions · the phone number
Where it is
McCrea BridgeTarghee National Forest · 2.4 mi
Buffalo CampgroundTarghee National Forest · 2.9 mi
Buffalo (Idaho)Targhee National Forest · 2.9 mi
Box Canyon CampgroundTarghee National Forest · 3.2 mi
Upper Coffee PotTarghee National Forest · 5.0 mi
Flatrock CampgroundTarghee National Forest · 6.2 miFrom West Yellowstone, Montana, take Highway 20 south, southwest for approximately 25 miles and from Ashton, Idaho, take Highway 20 north for approximately 27 miles.
Turn west onto the Kilgore-Yale Road #030 (across from Elk Creek Gas Station) and go about 2 miles to the Buttermilk Loop Road #126. Turn onto #126 and go approximately 3 miles to an intersection where you will see the campground sign just off the right side of the road. The road will split ahead, with boat ramp and group area on the left, and the single loops to the right.
The weather
the next four days · the thirty-year normal
Next four days, and the thirty-year normal
Forecast
NWS forecast for Island Park, ID
Typical weather
Typical May night 32°F, day 58°F.
Coldest night of the open season: typical May night 32°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
Buttermilk is in Idaho’s 2nd congressional district. Its representative, Mike Simpson (R), votes on the laws that decide what happens to this land. Public-lands grade so far: F. See every public-lands vote →