Coles Point
This place has sites and nobody may sleep in them.Ask for camping here →
- Right now
- Nobody has saidNo season, no closure, no bookings to read
The place
the agency’s own description · what’s there · 4 notices
In the agency’s own words
Coles Point Picnic Shelters are tucked in a small opening surrounded by a hardwood forest. Opportunities abound for hiking, photography, nature study, birding and viewing wildlife. Best of all, Coles Point is perched along Moomaw Lake, providing convenient access to boating, fishing, swimming and relaxing on the beach. Keep reading
Recreation
An inviting swimming beach within the recreation area lures crowds, and the picnic area has an open field for games like Frisbee and soccer. The park offers boating and fishing for large and smallmouth bass, brown trout, bluegill, crappie, shad, catfish, sunfish and chain pickerel. Two fishing docks, two boat ramps and a swimming beach with a bathhouse are located on-site. Back Creek is nearby, also a nice stream for trout fishing. The 1-mile Morris Hill Bike Trail is popular among hikers and bikers. The 3-mile Fortney Loop Trail is open to hiking along a path with several switchbacks.
Facilities
Each shelter can accommodate up to 50 people and 20 vehicles. Eight picnic tables sit on a concrete pad, and several additional tables are scattered around the shelter. Each shelter is also equipped with two large barbecue grills, one electrical outlet, drinking water and flush toilets.
Natural Features
The shelters are situated on a wooded peninsula on the south end of Lake Moomaw in Alleghany County. The manmade lake, at 2,530 acres, sits on the Jackson River and has 43 miles of wooded shoreline. Coles Point is part of the George Washington and Jefferson National Forests which span across Virginia and parts of West Virginia and Kentucky. These forests protect 40 species within mostly Appalachian hardwood and mixed pine-hardwood forests, 60 species of mammals and 200 species of birds.
Nearby Attractions
Head downstream on the Jackson River for fly-fishing, canoeing, rafting and kayaking. A half-hour east of the lake is Hot Springs, Virginia, a quaint and small rural resort town. The nearest groceries and gas are located in Covington, Virginia about 30 minutes from the lake. A pay phone is located at the nearby Morris Hill Campground.
What the agency tells you
A fee of $3 per vehicle will be charged in addition to the shelter reservation fee. It will be collected on site.
No livestock allowed
Click here for more information on George Washington and Jefferson National Forests
Everything else this campground posts · 1
Don't Move Firewood: Help protect our forests! Prevent the spread of tree-killing pests by obtaining firewood at or near your destination and burning it on-site. Moving firewood is illegal in some states. Visit dontmovefirewood.org to learn more.
Facilities
- Toilets
- Flush Toilets
- “…electrical outlet, drinking water and flush toilets. Natural Features The shelters are situated on a…”
- Drinking water
- Yes
- “…barbecue grills, one electrical outlet, drinking water and flush toilets. Natural Features The shelters…”
- Boat ramp
- Yes
Around the campground
- On the water
- Hot springs, Lake, River, Creek, Beach
- Biking
- Boating
- Fishing
- Hiking
- Swimming
- Water sports
- Wildlife viewing
- Night sky · 8th darkest of 88 in VA
- Bortle 3
- Fall color · reported 10 days ago, 28 km away
- Peak color
Nothing here to sleep in
The agency files 2 records here and marks every one of them day use, not overnight. On its own record there’s nothing here to spend the night in.
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 · 12
What you actually pay
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 Sep 10, 2026 · How we know all this
The sites
2 records · the site map
All 2 records
| COLES POINT | Picnic Shelter #1 | day use | 15 ft | 15 amp | 224 ft | $85 |
| COLES POINT | Picnic Shelter #2 | day use | 15 ft | 15 amp | 72 ft | $85 |
The agency files 2 more records here that aren’t sites for the night. It files them as day use. They’re in the table above, marked for what they are, and none of them is 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
Morris Hill CampgroundGeorge Washington National Forest · 1.4 mi
Bolar Mountain Recreation AreaGeorge Washington National Forest · 2.3 mi
McClintic PointGeorge Washington National Forest · 2.3 mi
Lake SherwoodMonongahela National Forest · 4.7 mi
Lake Sherwood Recreation Area and CampgroundMonongahela National Forest · 4.8 miFrom I-64 at Exit 16A or 16B in Covington, follow signs to U.S. Highway 220 and travel north about 5.5 miles. Turn left on State Road 687/Jackson River Road and travel about 3.2 miles. Turn left on State Road 641/Indian Draft Road, which soon becomes State Road 666. Travel about 4.2 miles on 641/666 to a 3-way intersection. Turn right on State Road 605 and travel 4.5 miles past the Morris Hill Campground entrance, and across the Gathright Dam. Picnic shelter #1 will be on the left.
The weather
the next four days · the thirty-year normal
Next four days, and the thirty-year normal
Forecast
NWS forecast for Hot Springs, VA
Typical weather
Typical October night 42°F, day 65°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
what threatens it · who answers for it · a letter you can send
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
Coles Point is in Virginia’s 6th congressional district. Its representative, Ben Cline (R), votes on the laws that decide what happens to this land. Public-lands grade so far: F. See every public-lands vote →
Who can change it · 3
The agency’s own record files sites here and marks every one of them day use. The draft asks whether any could open to overnight camping, and if not, why.
- The member who votes the moneyBen ClineU.S. Representative · Virginia’s 6th district
- Your senator, on the same appropriationMark R. WarnerU.S. Senator · Virginia
- Your senator, on the same appropriationTim KaineU.S. Senator · Virginia
Read the draft, or change the wording
Asks them to put the same question to the agency in writing.
Subject Coles Point has sites, and nobody may sleep in them
Dear Ben Cline, I’m a constituent in Virginia’s 6th district. Coles Point, George Washington National Forest, Virginia carries 2 records on the U.S. Forest Service’s own file, every one of them marked day use rather than overnight. I’m asking you to put one question to the U.S. Forest Service in writing: would they consider opening any of these sites to overnight camping, and if not, why not? Road trips and camping on public land are part of how this country knows itself. It’s where a lot of people meet the place they live in for the first time, and it has never been something you had to be well off, or well organised six months in advance, to do. Sent about Coles Point (George Washington National Forest, Virginia) via campanac.com
Asks them to put the same question to the agency in writing.
Subject Coles Point has sites, and nobody may sleep in them
Dear Mark R. Warner, I’m a constituent in Virginia. Coles Point, George Washington National Forest, Virginia carries 2 records on the U.S. Forest Service’s own file, every one of them marked day use rather than overnight. I’m asking you to put one question to the U.S. Forest Service in writing: would they consider opening any of these sites to overnight camping, and if not, why not? Road trips and camping on public land are part of how this country knows itself. It’s where a lot of people meet the place they live in for the first time, and it has never been something you had to be well off, or well organised six months in advance, to do. Sent about Coles Point (George Washington National Forest, Virginia) via campanac.com
Asks them to put the same question to the agency in writing.
Subject Coles Point has sites, and nobody may sleep in them
Dear Tim Kaine, I’m a constituent in Virginia. Coles Point, George Washington National Forest, Virginia carries 2 records on the U.S. Forest Service’s own file, every one of them marked day use rather than overnight. I’m asking you to put one question to the U.S. Forest Service in writing: would they consider opening any of these sites to overnight camping, and if not, why not? Road trips and camping on public land are part of how this country knows itself. It’s where a lot of people meet the place they live in for the first time, and it has never been something you had to be well off, or well organised six months in advance, to do. Sent about Coles Point (George Washington National Forest, Virginia) via campanac.com