Crocker Guard Station
We don’t think it should be. Every campground should hold some sites for whoever drives up.Tell your representative →
- Right now
- Taking bookingsSites offered on 1 of the next 2 nights read 15:31 UTC
- Sites
- 1All of them booked ahead
The place
the agency’s own description · what’s there · 11 notices
In the agency’s own words
Crocker Guard Station was built in 1912 as a home for Forest Service personnel, and was later staffed as a fire station until the 1980s. The historic Crocker Guard Station is located ten miles northeast of Portola, California, at an elevation of 5,700 feet. Visitors will experience the beautiful solitude of the Eastern Sierra Nevada Mountains. Nearby recreational opportunities include fishing, boating, swimming and hiking. Keep reading
Recreation
Crocker Campground is located adjacent to the Crocker Guard Station. The campground has vault toilets. Campsites have tables, fire rings and food lockers for $15.00 fee.. The campground is the perfect place to expand your guest list or have a campfire. At this campground, hunting is a popular fall activity. Lake Davis Recreation Area is within four miles, offering a variety of recreational opportunities. Visitors can fish, boat, swim, bike and hike.
Facilities
The house has four bedrooms with ten twin beds and mattresses including two sets of bunk beds, a kitchen, dining room, living room and an outside vault toilet building. Children will enjoy the large fenced in front yard. The rental has propane operated lights, cook stove and heater. There is no refrigerator. Cooking and eating utensils are provided. The house is equipped with smoke and carbon monoxide detectors and fire extinguishers. Visitors must bring drinking water. There is an outside hand pump with water for fire protection. Guests should bring bedding, towels, flashlights, trash bags and first aid kits. Visitors are responsible for cleaning the house, packing out trash and locking up before departure.
Natural Features
The Guard Station is situated in a small meadow near an aspen grove surrounded by a forest of pine trees.
Nearby Attractions
Stores, services and restaurants are available just ten miles away, in Portola, CA. The largest railroad museum in the west is located in Portola. It has a gift shop, train rides and plenty of railroading information Water activities like boating and fishing are as close as Lake Davis just five miles away on a dirt road. The night time sky offers star gazing, golden moon rises and meteor showers away from bright lights. There is some light pollution from Reno. Contact Info For facility specific information, please call (530) 836-2575.
What the agency tells you
Contact the Beckwourth Ranger District prior to arrival for further information and to get the combination to the entrance gate and the cabin; call: (530) 836-2575 during regular business hours (Monday-Friday from 8:00 to 4:30).
The cabin has enough beds for 10 visitors, the maximum occupancy is limited to16 visitors.
No tents are allowed; Crocker Campground has tent sites and is within 1/4 mile of this facility.
Everything else this campground posts · 8
Pets are allowed in the cabin; please clean up after your pet.
Smoking is not allowed in the cabin.
There is no drinking water, bring your own.
There is no refrigerator.
Clean out cabin before leaving: cleaning supplies are provided. Pack out all garbage.
Campfires are not allowed at the guard station. Campfires are allowed at Crocker Campground just a quarter mile away.
Check- In is 2:00pm and Check-Out is Noon
A propane barbeque is available for use. Bring your own propane.
Tents and rigs
- Sites
- 1 · 1 cabin
- Hookups
- None
- Longest rig
- 24 ft
- Accessible sites
- None listed
- Pets
- Allowed
- Shade
- Every site
Facilities
- Toilets
- Vault Toilets
- “…Guard Station. The campground has vault toilets. Campsites have tables, fire rings and food lockers…”
Around the campground
- On the water
- Lake, Meadow
- Fishing
- Hiking
- Night sky · 505th darkest of 1,201 in CA
- Bortle 3
Full this Saturdayread 15:31 UTC
How full the weekend is nationally.
OpenBookedNot on the booking system
Watch for a cancellation
Watch this campground
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
recreation.gov availability, read 15:31 UTC · rules read Sep 9, 2026 · rates Sep 10, 2026 · How we know all this
The sites
1 sites · the site map
All 1 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. 1 of the 1 sites listed carry one, and a site whose type has no published rate sits out of the price rather than being called free.
| CROCKER GUARD STATION | Crocker Guard Station | cabin nonelectric | 24 ft | 894 ft | $135 |
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
GrizzlyPlumas National Forest · 2.6 mi
Grasshopper FlatPlumas National Forest · 2.8 miHonker Cove OverflowPlumas National Forest · 2.8 miLightning Tree CampgroundPlumas National Forest · 4.9 mi
Lightning TreePlumas National Forest · 5.1 miFrom Portola, CA, travel east on Highway 70 for five miles to Beckwourth, CA. Travel north on County Road 111 (Beckwourth-Genesee Road) for six miles. Crocker Guard Station is 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 Beckwourth, CA
Typical weather
Typical October night 30°F, day 66°F.
Coldest month of the year: typical January night 19°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
who answers for it · a letter you can send
Who answers for this land
Crocker Guard Station 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 →
Who can change it · 3
Two offices, two different asks. The draft to the agency asks it to set aside a published share of the sites here for whoever drives up. The draft to Congress asks why that share is zero and presses for a published minimum at the campgrounds it funds.
- The member who votes the moneyKevin KileyU.S. Representative · California’s 3rd district
No contact form we could verify, so that link is their own site. Contact is inside it. Washington office: 202-225-2523.
- Your senator, on the same appropriationAdam B. SchiffU.S. Senator · California
- Your senator, on the same appropriationAlex PadillaU.S. Senator · California
Read the draft, or change the wording
For the camper who turned up, or tried to book, and couldn’t get in. Every draft is written from this campground’s own record (its agency, its unit, its site count and its own weekend) and the buttons above copy whichever wording is selected here.
Asks them to put the question to the agency in writing, and to press for a published minimum share of walk-up sites across the campgrounds they fund.
Subject Walk-up camping at Crocker Guard Station, Plumas National Forest, California
Dear Kevin Kiley, I’m a constituent in California’s 3rd district. I tried to camp at Crocker Guard Station, Plumas National Forest, California, and couldn’t. All 1 sites at Crocker Guard Station are reservable, and the agency's own record lists none held back for somebody who drives up. On Saturday, October 17, the one site recreation.gov was offering there was already booked. 1,623 of the 7,647 federal campgrounds in this country still keep at least some sites for whoever arrives first. Crocker Guard Station keeps none, and that’s a choice somebody made rather than a rule. I’m not asking you to run Crocker Guard Station. I’m asking you to put it to the U.S. Forest Service in writing: why is the share of first-come sites there zero, and what would a published minimum share cost? Please press for that minimum at the federal campgrounds you fund. The people who open these campgrounds, collect the fees and keep the water running are seasonal positions. At GS-5, base pay plus the government's own 36.25% benefit factor, one costs about $47,414 a year. One percent of the $13.3 billion the USS Gerald R. Ford cost to procure would pay for about 2,800 of them for a year. Both figures are the government's own (a Congressional Research Service report and an OPM pay table), and I’m glad to send them. Sent about Crocker Guard Station (Plumas National Forest, California) via campanac.com
Asks them to put the question to the agency in writing, and to press for a published minimum share of walk-up sites across the campgrounds they fund.
Subject Walk-up camping at Crocker Guard Station, Plumas National Forest, California
Dear Adam B. Schiff, I’m a constituent in California. I tried to camp at Crocker Guard Station, Plumas National Forest, California, and couldn’t. All 1 sites at Crocker Guard Station are reservable, and the agency's own record lists none held back for somebody who drives up. On Saturday, October 17, the one site recreation.gov was offering there was already booked. 1,623 of the 7,647 federal campgrounds in this country still keep at least some sites for whoever arrives first. Crocker Guard Station keeps none, and that’s a choice somebody made rather than a rule. I’m not asking you to run Crocker Guard Station. I’m asking you to put it to the U.S. Forest Service in writing: why is the share of first-come sites there zero, and what would a published minimum share cost? Please press for that minimum at the federal campgrounds you fund. The people who open these campgrounds, collect the fees and keep the water running are seasonal positions. At GS-5, base pay plus the government's own 36.25% benefit factor, one costs about $47,414 a year. One percent of the $13.3 billion the USS Gerald R. Ford cost to procure would pay for about 2,800 of them for a year. Both figures are the government's own (a Congressional Research Service report and an OPM pay table), and I’m glad to send them. Sent about Crocker Guard Station (Plumas National Forest, California) via campanac.com
Asks them to put the question to the agency in writing, and to press for a published minimum share of walk-up sites across the campgrounds they fund.
Subject Walk-up camping at Crocker Guard Station, Plumas National Forest, California
Dear Alex Padilla, I’m a constituent in California. I tried to camp at Crocker Guard Station, Plumas National Forest, California, and couldn’t. All 1 sites at Crocker Guard Station are reservable, and the agency's own record lists none held back for somebody who drives up. On Saturday, October 17, the one site recreation.gov was offering there was already booked. 1,623 of the 7,647 federal campgrounds in this country still keep at least some sites for whoever arrives first. Crocker Guard Station keeps none, and that’s a choice somebody made rather than a rule. I’m not asking you to run Crocker Guard Station. I’m asking you to put it to the U.S. Forest Service in writing: why is the share of first-come sites there zero, and what would a published minimum share cost? Please press for that minimum at the federal campgrounds you fund. The people who open these campgrounds, collect the fees and keep the water running are seasonal positions. At GS-5, base pay plus the government's own 36.25% benefit factor, one costs about $47,414 a year. One percent of the $13.3 billion the USS Gerald R. Ford cost to procure would pay for about 2,800 of them for a year. Both figures are the government's own (a Congressional Research Service report and an OPM pay table), and I’m glad to send them. Sent about Crocker Guard Station (Plumas National Forest, California) via campanac.com