Buzzard Roost Campground
- Right now
- Nobody has saidNo season, no closure, no bookings to read
- A night
- FreeNo camping fee
- Sites
- 5All of them booked ahead
The place
the agency’s own description · what’s there · 4 notices
In the agency’s own words
A scenic location for hiking and camping. Parking areas are available at the first trailhead access and at the picnic/camping spur. Tables, grills, garbage can, info board and a vault toilet are available at the camping area. A scenic overlook and benches are located on the bluffs overlooking the Ohio River. Water is not available on site. Keep reading
Recreation
This site offers rustic camping, scenic views and wildlife viewing. An ardous 0.5 mile trail from the bluff to the banks of the Ohio River is available.
Facilities
A vault toilet and garbage can is available. Each campsite includes a fire ring and picnic table.
Natural Features
Sandstone rock outcrops, bluffs, hardwood forest, and a scenic overlook platform with views of the Ohio River and Kentucky.
What the agency tells you
This campground First Come First Served and free of charge.
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.
Camping allowed at numbered sites only.
Everything else this campground posts · 1
Vehicles and trailers must remain on the pavement and out of the roadway.
Tents and rigs
- Sites
- 5
- Hookups
- None
- Paved pads
- All
- Accessible sites
- None listed
- Pets
- Allowed
- Campfires
- Allowed, barring fire bans
- Shade
- Every site
Facilities
- Toilets
- Vault Toilets
- VAULT TOILETS on 5 of 5 campsite records
- Drinking water
- None, bring your own
- “…the bluffs overlooking the Ohio River. Water is not available on site. Recreation This site offers rustic…”
- Stay limit
- 28 nights
- recreation.gov facility rule maxStay
Around the campground
- On the water
- River
- Hiking
- Observation Site
Nothing on the booking system for the next 30 nightsread 15:47 UTC
Every site here is reservable, and the record lists none held back for anyone who drives up.
Every one of the next thirty nights is in recreation.gov’s record and not one site is being offered on any of them. That’s a campground closed or not yet released for booking, not a sold-out one.
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 own record says there’s no camping fee, 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
recreation.gov availability, read 15:47 UTC · rules read Sep 9, 2026 · rates Sep 10, 2026 · How we know all this
The sites
5 sites · which ones have room · the site map
The sites, ranked
from 5 mapped sitesAll 5 sites
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.
| Buzzard Roost | 1 | standard nonelectric | 52 ft | 618 ft |
| Buzzard Roost | 2 | standard nonelectric | 52 ft | 661 ft |
| Buzzard Roost | 3 | standard nonelectric | 68 ft | 663 ft |
| Buzzard Roost | 4 | standard nonelectric | 50 ft | 586 ft |
| Buzzard Roost | 5 | standard nonelectric | 50 ft | 629 ft |
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.
Getting there
the map and the coordinate · the phone number
Where it is
The weather
the next four days · the thirty-year normal
Next four days, and the thirty-year normal
Forecast
NWS forecast for Alton, IN
Typical weather
Typical October night 44°F, day 71°F.
Coldest month of the year: typical January night 24°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 Augusts are colder than the August 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
Buzzard Roost Campground is in Indiana’s 8th congressional district. Its representative, Mark Messmer (R), votes on the laws that decide what happens to this land. Public-lands grade so far: F. See every public-lands vote →