Cottonwood Creek
3Heads up3 fires, nearest 22 mi
- Right now
- Closed for the seasonOut of the season the agency publishes
- A night
- $20From, per site
- Sites
- 48All of them booked ahead
- Season
- May 24 – October 14Open May 24 through October 14
The place
the agency’s own description · what’s there · 8 notices
In the agency’s own words
Cottonwood Creek Campground is located on Highway 89, four miles south of Sierraville. Its location makes it a great base camp for a variety of recreational activities, including fishing, hunting, hiking and biking. This facility is operated and maintained by Lake Tahoe Hospitality LLC for the Tahoe National Forest. Keep reading
Recreation
Cottonwood Creek Botanical Trail and Overlook Trail are both short, foot trails that begin in the campground. The surrounding area offers additional trails and fishing opportunities.
Facilities
The campground offers several single-family campsites, each equipped with a picnic table and campfire ring. Vault toilets, drinking water and trash collection are provided.
Natural Features
The campground sits along Cottonwood Creek, in a stand of Jeffrey pine, and red and white fir trees. The forest provides shade and privacy between sites, but noise from the highway can be heard within the campground. Contact Info This location has limited staffing. Please call (530) 606-3978 for general information.
Nearby Attractions
Lake Tahoe is located about 40 minutes from the campground. Scenic Tahoe offers excellent boating, kayaking, fishing, hiking and scenic driving opportunities. Sardine Lakes, within the beautiful Lakes Basin, is a 35-minute drive northwest of the campground, via the Golden Chain/Highway 49. Stampede Reservoir is a 45-minute drive southeast.
What the agency tells you
Bears frequent the area; all food should be kept in approved containers.
Off-road vehicle use is prohibited within the campground.
Fire restrictions may be imposed at any time due to hot, dry weather conditions, at which time campfires and charcoal fires may not be allowed. For current fire conditions or weather closures contact the Sierraville Ranger District (530) 994-3401 (voice), (530) 994-3521 (TDD).
Everything else this campground posts · 5
Click here for more information on the Tahoe National Forest
Don't Move Firewood: Protect California's forests from tree-killing pests by buying your firewood locally and burning it on-site. For more information visit firewood.ca.gov.
One vehicle included with reservation. Additional vehicle fee cost is $10/each per night for all vehicles. All operable, highway legal vehicles must pay extra vehicle fee, excluding the single vehicle included with the reservation. Please pay extra vehicle fee at the self-serve fee tube located near campground entrance if not paid online.
Campsite check-out time is 12:00pm. Check-in time is 2:00pm.
6 people and 2 dogs maximum per single site. Dogs shall always be kept on leash no longer than six feet or otherwise confined. Violation notices WILL be issued for non-compliance.
Tents and rigs
- Sites
- 48
- Hookups
- None
- Longest rig
- 45 ft
- Paved pads
- All
- Accessible sites
- None listed
- Pets
- Allowed
- Campfires
- Allowed, barring fire bans
- Shade
- Every site
Facilities
- Toilets
- Vault Toilets
- “…with a picnic table and campfire ring. Vault toilets, drinking water and trash collection are provided.…”
- Drinking water
- Yes
- “…table and campfire ring. Vault toilets, drinking water and trash collection are provided. Natural Features…”
- Stay limit
- 14 nights
- recreation.gov facility rule maxStay
Around the campground
- On the water
- Reservoir, Lake, Creek
- Biking
- Hiking
- Hunting
- Wildlife viewing
- Night sky · 836th darkest of 1,201 in CA
- Bortle 4
No reading yet, book on recreation.gov
Every site here is reservable, and the record lists none held back for anyone who drives up.
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 · 13
What you actually pay
“Additional vehicle fee cost is $10/each per night for all vehicles.” · the U.S. Forest Service’s own agency notice
Derived by CAMPANAC: the agency’s published rate for this season, $20 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
48 sites · which ones have room · the site map
The sites, ranked
from 48 mapped sitesAll 48 sites
The price is derived by CAMPANAC, not published per site: the per-night rate this campground publishes for each site’s own site type. 48 of the 48 sites listed carry one, and a site whose type has no published rate sits out of the price rather than being called free.
| COTTONWOOD CREEK | 001 | standard nonelectric | 35 ft | 102 ft | 251 ft | $20 |
| COTTONWOOD CREEK | 002 | standard nonelectric | 40 ft | 102 ft | 183 ft | $20 |
| COTTONWOOD CREEK | 003 | standard nonelectric | 40 ft | 62 ft | 113 ft | $20 |
| COTTONWOOD CREEK | 004 | standard nonelectric | 40 ft | 63 ft | 107 ft | $20 |
| COTTONWOOD CREEK | 005 | standard nonelectric | 25 ft | 51 ft | 205 ft | $20 |
| COTTONWOOD CREEK | 006 | standard nonelectric | 35 ft | 59 ft | 157 ft | $20 |
| COTTONWOOD CREEK | 007 | standard nonelectric | 25 ft | 55 ft | 246 ft | $20 |
| COTTONWOOD CREEK | 008 | standard nonelectric | 30 ft | 55 ft | 193 ft | $20 |
| COTTONWOOD CREEK | 009 | standard nonelectric | 25 ft | 58 ft | 254 ft | $20 |
| COTTONWOOD CREEK | 010 | standard nonelectric | 40 ft | 58 ft | 198 ft | $20 |
| COTTONWOOD CREEK | 011 | standard nonelectric | 40 ft | 90 ft | 248 ft | $20 |
| COTTONWOOD CREEK | 013 | standard nonelectric | 25 ft | 71 ft | 325 ft | $20 |
| COTTONWOOD CREEK | 014 | standard nonelectric | 25 ft | 55 ft | 423 ft | $20 |
| COTTONWOOD CREEK | 015 | standard nonelectric | 25 ft | 55 ft | 369 ft | $20 |
| COTTONWOOD CREEK | 016 | standard nonelectric | 35 ft | 66 ft | 443 ft | $20 |
| COTTONWOOD CREEK | 017 | standard nonelectric | 45 ft | 60 ft | 444 ft | $20 |
| COTTONWOOD CREEK | 018 | standard nonelectric | 20 ft | 46 ft | 385 ft | $20 |
| COTTONWOOD CREEK | 019 | standard nonelectric | 20 ft | 46 ft | 391 ft | $20 |
| COTTONWOOD CREEK | 020 | standard nonelectric | 40 ft | 50 ft | 331 ft | $20 |
| COTTONWOOD CREEK | 021 | standard nonelectric | 20 ft | 50 ft | 313 ft | $20 |
| COTTONWOOD CREEK | 022 | standard nonelectric | 25 ft | 51 ft | 248 ft | $20 |
| COTTONWOOD CREEK | 023 | standard nonelectric | 35 ft | 57 ft | 250 ft | $20 |
| COTTONWOOD CREEK | 024 | standard nonelectric | 25 ft | 52 ft | 173 ft | $20 |
| COTTONWOOD CREEK | 025 | standard nonelectric | 25 ft | 52 ft | 173 ft | $20 |
| COTTONWOOD CREEK | 026 | standard nonelectric | 25 ft | 53 ft | 167 ft | $20 |
| COTTONWOOD CREEK | 027 | standard nonelectric | 25 ft | 53 ft | 162 ft | $20 |
| COTTONWOOD CREEK | 028 | standard nonelectric | 25 ft | 92 ft | 313 ft | $20 |
| COTTONWOOD CREEK | 029 | standard nonelectric | 35 ft | 75 ft | 343 ft | $20 |
| COTTONWOOD CREEK | 030 | standard nonelectric | 25 ft | 54 ft | 422 ft | $20 |
| COTTONWOOD CREEK | 031 | standard nonelectric | 40 ft | 54 ft | 417 ft | $20 |
| COTTONWOOD CREEK | 032 | standard nonelectric | 25 ft | 64 ft | 489 ft | $20 |
| COTTONWOOD CREEK | 033 | standard nonelectric | 35 ft | 64 ft | 529 ft | $20 |
| COTTONWOOD CREEK | 034 | standard nonelectric | 35 ft | 67 ft | 634 ft | $20 |
| COTTONWOOD CREEK | 035 | standard nonelectric | 25 ft | 67 ft | 579 ft | $20 |
| COTTONWOOD CREEK | 036 | standard nonelectric | 35 ft | 82 ft | 643 ft | $20 |
| COTTONWOOD CREEK | 037 | standard nonelectric | 25 ft | 71 ft | 582 ft | $20 |
| COTTONWOOD CREEK | 038 | standard nonelectric | 40 ft | 85 ft | 628 ft | $20 |
| COTTONWOOD CREEK | 039 | standard nonelectric | 25 ft | 73 ft | 311 ft | $20 |
| COTTONWOOD CREEK | 040 | standard nonelectric | 35 ft | 73 ft | 376 ft | $20 |
| COTTONWOOD CREEK | 041 | standard nonelectric | 25 ft | 79 ft | 399 ft | $20 |
| COTTONWOOD CREEK | 042 | standard nonelectric | 30 ft | 79 ft | 454 ft | $20 |
| COTTONWOOD CREEK | 043 | standard nonelectric | 25 ft | 76 ft | 470 ft | $20 |
| COTTONWOOD CREEK | 044 | standard nonelectric | 40 ft | 71 ft | 528 ft | $20 |
| COTTONWOOD CREEK | 045 | standard nonelectric | 35 ft | 62 ft | 589 ft | $20 |
| COTTONWOOD CREEK | 046 | standard nonelectric | 25 ft | 62 ft | 530 ft | $20 |
| COTTONWOOD CREEK | 047 | standard nonelectric | 40 ft | 64 ft | 595 ft | $20 |
| COTTONWOOD CREEK | 048 | standard nonelectric | 40 ft | 99 ft | 555 ft | $20 |
| COTTONWOOD CREEK | 049 | standard nonelectric | 25 ft | 117 ft | 440 ft | $20 |
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 48 listed
Getting there
the map and the coordinate · the agency’s directions · the phone number
Where it is
Cold CreekTahoe National Forest · 0.5 miBear Valley CampgroundTahoe National Forest · 4.3 mi
Upper Little TruckeeTahoe National Forest · 5.5 mi
Lower Little TruckeeTahoe National Forest · 6.1 mi
Sardine Peak LookoutTahoe National Forest · 6.9 miSagehen Creek CampgroundTahoe National Forest · 8.5 miFrom Truckee, travel north on Highway 80 to Highway 89 approximately 20 miles to the campground. From Sierraville, travel approximately 5 miles south on Hwy 89, the campground will be on the left side of the highway.
The weather
the next four days · the thirty-year normal
Next four days, and the thirty-year normal
Forecast
NWS forecast for Sierraville, CA
Typical weather
Typical October night 29°F, day 63°F.
Coldest night of the open season: typical October night 29°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
who answers for it
Who answers for this land
Cottonwood Creek is in California’s 3rd congressional district. Its representative, Kevin Kiley (I), votes on the laws that decide what happens to this land. Public-lands grade so far: F. See every public-lands vote →