CAMPANAC.Powered by public lands intelligenceMore Than Just Parks
The map
U.S. Forest Service · Santa Fe National Forest · NM

Cowles Campground

1Heads up1 fire 12 mi away
Wildfire
Frijoles fire · 12 mi away · 15,956 acres · 90% contained · updated Sep 24, 2026
Fires: NIFC/IRWIN via MTJP wildfire tracker · Sep 24, 2026
First come, first servedNo reservation, and none to be had: the sites go to whoever pulls in first.

This is how it should work.

Get directionsWhat it costs, and the rules
Right now
OpenListed open; its database flags it not open
Season
May 1 – October 31Open May 1 through October 31
Drawn from the record · 8,220 ft · 37% tree cover · Winsor Creek within reach · Bortle 3 sky
8,220 ftElevation
13 ftWater · Winsor Creek
13.3 miNE of Tesuque, NM
37%Tree cover
Bortle 3Night sky · 103rd darkest of 164 in NM
Open May 1 through October 31Today

The place

the agency’s own description · what’s there

In the agency’s own words

Cowles Campground sits at the base of the Winsor Canyon where it meets the Pecos Canyon and is near Cowles Ponds, Winsor Creek, Pecos River, and Winsor Ridge Trailhead. Note: campground shelters are currently closed while safety assessments are performed. Uses: tent camping, picnicking, fishing, & hiking. Facilities: 1 vault toilet, 9 camping units with tables, fire rings, grills, 2 covered three-sided shelters with fireplaces, and trash bins. No potable water, utility hook-ups, dump stations or showers. Special Instructions: Users are encouraged to recycle and pack out trash. Please visit the Leave No Trace website for more information about frontcountry and backcountry outdoor ethics.

Source: USFS Enterprise Data Warehouse · Aug 24, 2026

Facilities

Toilets
Vault Toilets
“…fishing, & hiking. Facilities: 1 vault toilet, 9 camping units with tables, fire rings, grills, 2…”
Drinking water
None, bring your own
“…with fireplaces, and trash bins. No potable water, utility hook-ups, dump stations or showers.…”
Dump station
Yes
Source: Stated in the agency description
Water, toilets and showers: read from the agency description, shown above · Sep 12, 2026

Around the campground

On the water
River, Creek
Fall color · reported 6 days ago, 14 km away
Peak color
Source: Stated in the agency description
Fall color: More Than Just Parks foliage tracker, joined to this campground by distance (14 km) · Oct 11, 2026

Nothing to book, just show up

One of 1,623 federal campgrounds where the site still goes to whoever pulls in first. Get there before noon on a summer weekend.

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.

BookingNo reservationsNothing to book, and no release date to wait forthe record
Runs itU.S. Forest Servicethe agency’s record
Directions
Every line of the receipt · 4

What you actually pay

The sign priceU.S. Forest Service
The U.S. Forest Service publishes no per-night rate for this campground that we can read, so there’s no sign price to print. That’s a gap in the record, not a free campground.
Vehicle per night$6
The booking feerecreation.gov
Nothing. This campground takes no bookings, so there’s no reservation fee to pay.
What a stay costs
The agency publishes no nightly rate for this campground, so there’s no total to show.
How we know this receipt · 4
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
Coordinate35.81268, -105.66435

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

Tonight27°Mostly Clear
Saturday58°Sunny
Saturday Night32°Partly Cloudy2% rain
Sunday59°Mostly Sunny7% rain

NWS forecast for Rio en Medio, NM

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

Typical weather

Typical October night 32°F, day 61°F.

Coldest night of the open season: typical October night 32°F, below freezing. Bring a bag rated colder than that, and expect ice in the water bottle.

80°32°10°

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: GASCON, NM (USC00293488), 13 miles away and 30 ft higher
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
Pecos WS River5,396 acres · 1 mi · inventoried roadless area
Roadless
Jacks Creek740 acres · 1 mi · inventoried roadless area
Roadless
Grass Mountain3,254 acres · 2 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

Teresa Leger Fernandez, official portrait

Cowles Campground is in New Mexico’s 3rd congressional district. Its representative, Teresa Leger Fernandez (D), votes on the laws that decide what happens to this land. Public-lands grade so far: A+. 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 open right now. Its own recreation database, though, flags it not open with no reason or date; the flag is named under How we know all this.
Listed not open: USFS EDW Recreation Opportunities, openstatus field: a not-open flag in a database, with no reason and no date published; read there since Sep 9, 2026. A flag, not a notice, so this page doesn’t call it a closure. · Oct 16, 2026
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: 0.16 mcd/m² of artificial all-sky glow, ranked against the 164 rated federal campgrounds in New Mexico · 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
Fall color: More Than Just Parks foliage tracker, joined to this campground by distance (14 km) · Oct 11, 2026
Reported by: iNaturalist fall color observations, reported peak color · Oct 11, 2026
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: Rio en Medio, NM, 12.4 mi E (a census designated place). 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