Card Creek
- Right now
- Taking bookingsSites offered on 30 of the next 30 nights read 15:22 UTC
- A night
- $12–$18Across the site types the agency prices
- Sites
- 19All of them booked ahead
The place
the agency’s own description · what’s there · 1 notices
In the agency’s own words
Card Creek Campground is located 5 miles west of Independence Kansas. Keep reading
Recreation
There is very good fishing at Card Creek and there is a hiking trail adjacent to the campground. Camping is available year round. It is located near the Kansas Department of Wildlife, Parks and Tourism hunting areas.
Facilities
There are 15 electric campsites and 5 primitive campsites. There is one shower building restroom and one vault toilet. There is a boat ramp and a dump station.
Natural Features
Card Creek Campground is located along Card Creek which flows into Elk City Lake.
Nearby Attractions
The City of Independence is located 5 miles east of the park. Located near the Elk River Hiking Trail, for more information visit www.kansastrailscouncil.org.
What the agency tells you
Campsite 14 is closed for maintenance until further notice.
Tents and rigs
- Sites
- 19
- Hookups
- 15 electric, 9 water
- Longest rig
- 89 ft
- Accessible sites
- None listed
- Pets
- Allowed
- Campfires
- Allowed, barring fire bans
Facilities
- Toilets
- Vault Toilets
- “…is one shower building restroom and one vault toilet. There is a boat ramp and a dump station. Natural…”
- Showers
- Yes, the record doesn’t say what kind
- “There is one shower building restroom and one vault toilet.”
- Dump station
- Yes
- recreation.gov lists “Dump Station”
- Boat ramp
- Yes
- Camp host
- On site
- recreation.gov lists “Host”
- Stay limit
- 14 nights
- recreation.gov facility rule maxStay
Around the campground
- On the water
- Lake, River, Creek
- Biking
- Birding
- Boating
- Canoeing
- Fishing
- Hiking
- Hunting
- Kayaking
- Motor Boat
- Non-Motorized Boating
- Paddling
- Picnicking
- Scenic drives
- Stargazing
- Night sky · 19th darkest of 57 in KS
- Bortle 4
25 of 40 site-nights open this Friday and Saturdayread 15:22 UTC
Every site here is reservable, and the record lists none held back for anyone who drives up.
OpenBooked
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 · 16
What you actually pay
Derived by CAMPANAC: the agency’s published rates for this season, $12–$18 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
recreation.gov availability, read 15:22 UTC · rules read Sep 9, 2026 · rates Sep 10, 2026 · How we know all this
The sites
20 records · which ones have room · the site map
The sites, ranked
from 20 mapped sitesAll 20 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. 19 of the 20 sites listed carry one, and a site whose type has no published rate sits out of the price rather than being called free.
| 1 | standard electric | 37 ft | 30 amp | 56 ft | 226 ft | $16–$18 |
| 10 | standard electric | 42 ft | 30 amp | 26 ft | 176 ft | $16–$18 |
| 11 | standard electric | 46 ft | 30 amp | 27 ft | 174 ft | $16–$18 |
| 12 | standard electric | 68 ft | 30 amp | 73 ft | 170 ft | $16–$18 |
| 13 | standard electric | 68 ft | 30 amp | 72 ft | 172 ft | $16–$18 |
| 14 | standard electric | 32 ft | 30 amp | 72 ft | 180 ft | $16–$18 |
| 16 | standard nonelectric | 60 ft | 27 ft | 200 ft | $12 | |
| 17 | standard nonelectric | 60 ft | 26 ft | 202 ft | $12 | |
| 18 | standard nonelectric | 62 ft | 35 ft | 198 ft | $12 | |
| 19 | standard nonelectric | 60 ft | 28 ft | 185 ft | $12 | |
| 2 | standard electric | 44 ft | 30 amp | 64 ft | 162 ft | $16–$18 |
| 20 | standard electric | 89 ft | 30 amp | 29 ft | 191 ft | $16–$18 |
| 3 | standard electric | 42 ft | 30 amp | 56 ft | 171 ft | $16–$18 |
| 4 | standard electric | 25 ft | 30 amp | 97 ft | 177 ft | $16–$18 |
| 5 | standard electric | 33 ft | 30 amp | 42 ft | 198 ft | $16–$18 |
| 6 | standard electric | 76 ft | 30 amp | 21 ft | 164 ft | $16–$18 |
| 7 | standard electric | 41 ft | 30 amp | 21 ft | 154 ft | $16–$18 |
| 8 | standard electric | 23 ft | 30 amp | 28 ft | 158 ft | $16–$18 |
| 9 | standard electric | 42 ft | 30 amp | 35 ft | 168 ft | $16–$18 |
| Larry Troutman Shelter | day use | 20 amp | 273 ft | 472 ft |
The agency files 1 more record here that isn’t a site for the night. It files it as day use. 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.
Getting there
the map and the coordinate · the agency’s directions · the phone number
Where it is
Outlet Channel4.1 mi
Cherryvale Park22 mi
Downstream Point22 mi
Mound Valley22 mi
Timber Hill Park22 mi
Washington Cove25 miFrom Independence follow Highway 160 west to brown directional sign and follow the blacktop to the park.
The weather
the next four days · the thirty-year normal
Next four days, and the thirty-year normal
Forecast
NWS forecast for Elk City, KS
Typical weather
Typical October night 47°F, day 72°F.
Coldest month of the year: typical January night 23°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
who answers for it
Who answers for this land
Card Creek is in Kansas’s 2nd congressional district. Its representative, Derek Schmidt (R), votes on the laws that decide what happens to this land. Public-lands grade so far: F. See every public-lands vote →