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U.S. Forest Service · Flaming Gorge National Recreation Area · UT

Carmel Campground

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
Closed for the seasonOut of the season the agency publishes
A night
$12From, per site
Season
May 1 – September 30Open May 1 through September 30
Photos · U.S. Forest Service
6,230 ftElevation
325 ftWater · Sheep Creek
30.7 miNW of Maeser, UT
0%Tree cover
Bortle 2Night sky · 148th darkest of 458 in UT
Open May 1 through September 30Today

The place

the agency’s own description

In the agency’s own words

This developed campground has interpretive displays which help you appreciate the magic of the surrounding area. Nearby Activities: Sheep Canyon Geological Area, just west of the Flaming Gorge National Recreation Area, features stunning scenic panoramas, framed by colorfully-striated cliffs.

Source: USFS Enterprise Data Warehouse · Aug 24, 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
A night$12Per site, fromthe agency’s fee record
A weekend$24DerivedFriday and Saturday, everything includedours, from the lines above
Runs itU.S. Forest Servicethe agency’s record
Directions
Every line of the receipt · 5

What you actually pay

The sign priceU.S. Forest Service
A night, from$12
Night for single unit .$12
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
One night, fromDerived$12
A weekend, Friday and Saturday, fromDerived$24

Derived by CAMPANAC: the lowest per-night amount the agency’s fee record states ($12), and no booking fee, because this campground takes no reservations. A weekend here means Friday and Saturday night. Optional charges (an extra vehicle, a second tent, a dump-station fee) are listed separately and aren’t in this total.

How we know this receipt · 5
Sign price: Derived by CAMPANAC from the U.S. Forest Service fee record: a stated per-night amount only · Sep 7, 2026
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
Coordinate40.93077, -109.73256

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

Tonight36°Mostly Clear
Saturday63°Sunny
Saturday Night34°Mostly Clear
Sunday60°Mostly Sunny

NWS forecast for Manila, UT

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

Typical weather

Typical May night 38°F, day 67°F.

Coldest night of the open season: typical May night 38°F. Bring the bag rated for it.

100°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: FLAMING GORGE, UT (USC00422864), 17 miles away and at about the same elevation
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

Roadless country, and what’s coming for it

Roadless
North Sheep Creek Hill531 acres · 1 mi · inventoried roadless area
Roadless
Sheep Creek Hill7,110 acres · 1 mi · inventoried roadless area
Roadless
North Dowd Mountain446 acres · 5 mi · inventoried roadless area

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

Source: USFS Inventoried Roadless Areas via MTJP Roadless Map · Jul 29, 2026

Who answers for this land

Mike Kennedy, official portrait

Carmel Campground is in Utah’s 3rd congressional district. Its representative, Mike Kennedy (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 out of season. The season it publishes is the bar below.
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: 0.058 mcd/m² of artificial all-sky glow, ranked against the 458 rated federal campgrounds in Utah · 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
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: Manila, UT, 3.8 mi S. 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