Crescent Lake (MN)
- Right now
- Nobody has saidNo season, no closure, no bookings to read
- A night
- $20From, per site
- Sites
- 3433 on recreation.gov
The place
the agency’s own description · what’s there · 7 notices
In the agency’s own words
Crescent Lake is an undeveloped lake surrounded entirely by the remote Superior National Forest. This quiet campground has waterfront campsites with easy access to fishing, exploring the nearby wilderness and simply enjoying the beauty of the natural area. Superior National Forest, located in northeastern Minnesota's arrowhead region, is comprised of 3 million acres. The forest spans 150 miles along the United States-Canada border. Visitors can find recreation opportunities year-round, including travel in the famous Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. Keep reading
Recreation
The fishing is good for walleye, northern pike and muskie. Crescent Lake allows motorized boat use without limit on horsepower, but is most appropriate for small fishing or similar type boats. The surrounding national forest offers a wide variety of recreational opportunities, including hiking in secluded woodlands and canoeing in pristine lakes and rivers. View recreation guides and maps of hiking trails and canoe routes in the national forest.
Facilities
The campground has 32 sites situated on a peninsula that juts out into the lake, providing many sites with nice views of the water and some sites with access to the water. A few sites are first-come, first-served, including one primitive backcountry camping site that campers can boat into; access is a boat ramp on the northwest side of the lake. Picnic tables, campfire grates, water pumps and vault toilets are provided. A fishing pier is located within the campground.
Natural Features
Superior National Forest is known for its boreal forest ecosystem, numerous clean lakes and diversity of plants and animals. The entire campground is heavily wooded with white pines, red pines, spruce, balsam, birch and aspen. Birds and wildlife are abundant, from moose and bear to bald eagles and loons.
Nearby Attractions
The concessionaire Sawbill Canoe Outfitters maintains a store with showers, laundry, fishing licenses, fishing bait and tackle, ice, grocery and convenience items, canoe and camping gear rental and a pay telephone. It is 13 miles from the campground. Numerous outdoor recreation opportunities lie within Superior National Forest, including the nearby Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. Over one million acres in size, the Boundary Waters extend nearly 150 miles along the United States-Canada border and contain over 1,200 miles of canoe routes, 12 hiking trails and over 2,000 designated campsites. Additional sites of interest .
What the agency tells you
Limit of two vehicles per campsite, not including trailers; $10 fee for second vehicle. Extra vehicle can be paid online in advance or in person onsite. If paid onsite, you won't be charged the $2 add-on fee; free public parking lot is also available onsite near the campground
Check-in / Check-out time is 12:00pm (noon)
Dogs are allowed but must be leashed
Everything else this campground posts · 4
Fires in campfire pits only and must be completely extinguished; cutting of live vegetation is not allowed
Be bear aware; keep all food out of site in approved containers or locked inside a hard-sided vehicle and remove all food from area after eating
Click here for more information on Superior National Forest
Don't move firewood: To limit the spread of invasive tree-killing pests, firewood from outside the area is not permitted. Some states have quarantines and may confiscate your firewood. Please help protect our forests from invasive species by obtaining your firewood at or near your camping destination and burning it on-site. Visit dontmovefirewood.org for more information.
Tents and rigs
- Sites
- 34 · 3 tent-only, 1 group
- Hookups
- None
- Longest rig
- 45 ft
- Accessible sites
- 2
- Pets
- Allowed
- Campfires
- Allowed, barring fire bans
- Shade
- Every site
Facilities
- Toilets
- Vault Toilets
- ACCESSIBLE VAULT TOILETS on 17 of 34 campsite records
- Drinking water
- Yes
- “…lake. Picnic tables, campfire grates, water pumps and vault toilets are provided. A fishing pier is…”
- Boat ramp
- Yes
- Store
- Nearby
Around the campground
- On the water
- Lake, River
- Boating
- Fishing
- Night sky · 7th darkest of 77 in MN
- Bortle 2
Nothing on the booking system for the next 30 nightsread 16:14 UTC
recreation.gov lists 33 of the 34 campsites the agency files here. The rest aren’t on its booking system, so a reservation won’t get you one.
Every one of the next thirty nights is in recreation.gov’s record and not one site is being offered on any of them. That’s a campground closed or not yet released for booking, not a sold-out one.
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 · 16
What you actually pay
“$10 fee for second vehicle.” · 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
recreation.gov availability, read 16:14 UTC · rules read Sep 9, 2026 · rates Oct 1, 2026 · How we know all this
The sites
34 sites · which ones have room · the site map
The sites, ranked
from 17 mapped sitesAll 34 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. 33 of the 34 sites listed carry one, and a site whose type has no published rate sits out of the price rather than being called free.
| CRESCENT LAKE (MN) | 001 | tent only nonelectric | 205 ft | 44 ftCrescent Lake | $20 | ||
| CRESCENT LAKE (MN) | 002 | standard nonelectric | yes | $20 | |||
| CRESCENT LAKE (MN) | 003 | tent only nonelectric | 164 ft | 53 ftCrescent Lake | $20 | ||
| CRESCENT LAKE (MN) | 004 | standard nonelectric | $20 | ||||
| CRESCENT LAKE (MN) | 005 | tent only nonelectric | 164 ft | 17 ftCrescent Lake | $20 | ||
| CRESCENT LAKE (MN) | 006 | standard nonelectric | 45 ft | 317 ft | 51 ftCrescent Lake | $20 | |
| CRESCENT LAKE (MN) | 007 | standard nonelectric | $20 | ||||
| CRESCENT LAKE (MN) | 008 | standard nonelectric | 45 ft | 93 ft | 54 ftCrescent Lake | $20 | |
| CRESCENT LAKE (MN) | 009 | standard nonelectric | 45 ft | yes | 93 ft | 96 ftCrescent Lake | $20 |
| CRESCENT LAKE (MN) | 010 | standard nonelectric | $20 | ||||
| CRESCENT LAKE (MN) | 011 | standard nonelectric | $20 | ||||
| CRESCENT LAKE (MN) | 012 | standard nonelectric | 45 ft | 62 ft | 180 ftCrescent Lake | $20 | |
| CRESCENT LAKE (MN) | 013 | standard nonelectric | 45 ft | 62 ft | 234 ftCrescent Lake | $20 | |
| CRESCENT LAKE (MN) | 014 | standard nonelectric | $20 | ||||
| CRESCENT LAKE (MN) | 015 | standard nonelectric | $20 | ||||
| CRESCENT LAKE (MN) | 016 | standard nonelectric | 45 ft | 62 ft | 223 ftCrescent Lake | $20 | |
| CRESCENT LAKE (MN) | 017 | standard nonelectric | 45 ft | 62 ft | 162 ftCrescent Lake | $20 | |
| CRESCENT LAKE (MN) | 018 | standard nonelectric | $20 | ||||
| CRESCENT LAKE (MN) | 019 | standard nonelectric | $20 | ||||
| CRESCENT LAKE (MN) | 020 | standard nonelectric | 45 ft | 65 ft | 306 ftCrescent Lake | $20 | |
| CRESCENT LAKE (MN) | 021 | standard nonelectric | 45 ft | 65 ft | 335 ftCrescent Lake | $20 | |
| CRESCENT LAKE (MN) | 022 | standard nonelectric | $20 | ||||
| CRESCENT LAKE (MN) | 023 | standard nonelectric | 45 ft | 280 ft | 105 ftCrescent Lake | $20 | |
| CRESCENT LAKE (MN) | 024 | standard nonelectric | $20 | ||||
| CRESCENT LAKE (MN) | 025 | standard nonelectric | 45 ft | 83 ft | 147 ftCrescent Lake | $20 | |
| CRESCENT LAKE (MN) | 026 | standard nonelectric | 45 ft | 83 ft | 81 ftCrescent Lake | $20 | |
| CRESCENT LAKE (MN) | 027 | standard nonelectric | $20 | ||||
| CRESCENT LAKE (MN) | 028 | standard nonelectric | $20 | ||||
| CRESCENT LAKE (MN) | 029 | standard nonelectric | $20 | ||||
| CRESCENT LAKE (MN) | 030 | standard nonelectric | 45 ft | 168 ft | 144 ftCrescent Lake | $20 | |
| CRESCENT LAKE (MN) | 031 | standard nonelectric | 45 ft | 168 ft | 110 ftCrescent Lake | $20 | |
| CRESCENT LAKE (MN) | 032 | standard nonelectric | $20 | ||||
| CRESCENT LAKE (MN) | 033 | type not stated | |||||
| CRESCENT LAKE (MN) | 034 | group standard nonelectric | $40 |
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 34 listed
Getting there
the map and the coordinate · the agency’s directions · the phone number
Where it is
Sawbill Lake Campground - Superior National ForestSuperior National Forest · 5.5 miWhite Pine Lake Rustic Campground6.8 miPoplar River Rustic CampgroundSuperior National Forest · 6.8 miTravel Highway 61 along Lake Superior's north shore to Tofte, Minnesota. In Tofte, turn north (away from Lake Superior) on Sawbill Trail (CCHS 2). Follow the Sawbill Trail for 16 miles to The Grade (Forest Road 170). Turn right onto the The Grade and proceed east for 7 miles. The campground is on your right and is marked by a large sign.
The weather
the next four days · the thirty-year normal
Next four days, and the thirty-year normal
Forecast
NWS forecast for Lutsen, MN
Typical weather
Typical October night 33°F, day 49°F.
Coldest month of the year: typical January night -6°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
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
Crescent Lake (MN) is in Minnesota’s 8th congressional district. Its representative, Pete Stauber (R), votes on the laws that decide what happens to this land. Public-lands grade so far: F. See every public-lands vote →