Dale Miller Youth
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 16 of the next 16 nights read 16:19 UTC
- Sites
- 1All of them booked ahead
The place
the agency’s own description · what’s there · 7 notices
In the agency’s own words
Dale Miller Youth is located on the south-eastern shore of Rend Lake— the perfect place to enjoy a wide variety of activities, events, and nature at its best. Rend Lake is made up of 20,633 acres of water and 19,523 acres of land. Whether you're looking for high adventure, a peaceful retreat, or something in between, you'll find it here in the heart of Southern Illinois. Keep reading
Recreation
Within the area, visitors can access the Rend Lake Bike Trail—over 20 miles of paved pathways that guide riders through scenic woodlands and across views of Rend Lake and the Big Muddy River. The area offers abundant opportunities for boating, hiking, fishing, hunting, swimming, and general outdoor exploration. Additional recreation features around Rend Lake include an archery complex with a 3D trail and elevated shooting platform, a dog park with a swimming feature, and two public swimming beaches (including the pet-friendly North Marcum Beach).
Facilities
Dale Miller Youth Campground has five cabins with open floorplans to accomodate air mattresses or other sleeping equipment. There are also nine (9) RV campsites and several tent sites available, bringing the total capacity to 200 guests. A large enclosed picnic shelter with electricity, tables, a fireplace and grill is provided, along with a private beach, playground, baseball field, basketball court, and tennis court.
Natural Features
The fields, forests, and waters of Rend Lake provide a natural haven for wildlife and an outdoor wonderland for you. Woodland areas are made up of hickory, oak, and beautiful maples providing habitat to white-tail deer, turkeys, racoons, and many more native species. The shorelines are an excellent viewing area for waterfowl, shorebirds, and bank fishing the known crappie population.
What the agency tells you
During the Peak season, an additonal fee of $75.00 will be added to the Use fee charged on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays. On the Non-Peak season, an additional fee of $50.00 will be added to the use fee charged on Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays.
Register with gate attendant at South Marcum Campground upon arrival to pick up cabin keys.
Prior approval for the placement of non-camping equipment including portable toilets, inflatables, refrigerators, etc. required. Please contact the Project Office for additional information, (618) 724-2493.
Everything else this campground posts · 4
Reservations require a primary occupant to be 18 years of age or older and to be present on-site for the duration of the stay.
The cabins have an open floor plan. Campers should bring their own equipment (air mattress, cot, etc.) to sleep on. Window A/C units are NOT allowed due to damage occuring to windows and screens within the cabins.
Don't Move Firewood: Protect your forests from tree-killing pests by buying your firewood locally and burning it on-site. Visit Dontmovefirewood.org for further information.
See Park Information Guide for additional rules and regulations.
Tents and rigs
- Sites
- 1 · 1 group
- Hookups
- None
- Longest rig
- 99 ft
- Paved pads
- All
- Accessible sites
- None listed
- Pets
- Allowed
- Campfires
- Allowed, barring fire bans
- Shade
- Every site
Facilities
- Toilets
- Flush Toilets
- FLUSH TOILETS on 1 of 1 campsite records
- Showers
- Yes, the record doesn’t say what kind
- SHOWERS on 1 of 1 campsite records, Shower/Bath Type states a shower on 1 campsite record(s) that are not a cabin, of this campground's 1
- Playground
- Yes
- Stay limit
- 14 nights
- recreation.gov facility rule maxStay
Around the campground
- On the water
- Lake, River, Beach
- Biking
- Birding
- Boating
- Fishing
- Picnicking
- Swimming
- Water access
- Night sky · 23rd darkest of 30 in IL
- Bortle 4
Full this Saturdayread 16:19 UTC
How full the weekend is nationally.
4 campgrounds have sites open within 30 miles, read 16:22 UTC. See them
OpenBooked
The one site on offer is taken this Saturday, and on four midweek nights after it as well. read 16:19 UTC Why the weekend fills and the week doesn’t
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
Open within 30 miles this weekend · 4
Sites the agency is offering this Friday and Saturday that nobody has taken, nearest first. read 16:22 UTC
- South Marcum CampgroundRend Lake · 0.2 mi · 21 of 258 site-nights open
- Gun CreekRend Lake · 3.1 mi · 3 of 198 site-nights open
- South Sandusky CampgroundRend Lake · 3.4 mi · 10 of 211 site-nights open
- North Sandusky CampgroundRend Lake · 4.2 mi · 2 of 190 site-nights open
recreation.gov availability, read 16:19 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
Toilet distances are OpenStreetMap’s, measured for 1 of the 1 sites listed. A site with no reading is unknown, never far.
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.
| DALE MILLER YOUTH | 1 | group standard nonelectric | 99 ft | 30 amp | 331 ft | 820 ft | $150 |
Getting there
the map and the coordinate · the agency’s directions · the phone number
Where it is
South Marcum Campground0.2 mi
Spillway Group Area0.6 mi
Gun Creek3.1 mi
South Sandusky Campground3.4 mi
Shagbark Group Area3.4 mi
North Sandusky Campground4.2 miFrom I-57 take take exit 71 and turn west onto Route 14. After 3 miles turn right on Rend City Road, then right again on Main Dam Road. Continue 3 miles to the camp entrance 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 Benton, IL
Typical weather
Typical October night 46°F, day 69°F.
Coldest month of the year: typical January night 24°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
Dale Miller Youth is in Illinois’s 12th congressional district. Its representative, Mike Bost (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
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 moneyMike BostU.S. Representative · Illinois’s 12th district
- Your senator, on the same appropriationRichard J. DurbinU.S. Senator · Illinois
- Your senator, on the same appropriationTammy DuckworthU.S. Senator · Illinois
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 Dale Miller Youth, Illinois
Dear Mike Bost, I’m a constituent in Illinois’s 12th district. I tried to camp at Dale Miller Youth, Illinois, and couldn’t. All 1 sites at Dale Miller Youth 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. Dale Miller Youth keeps none, and that’s a choice somebody made rather than a rule. I’m not asking you to run Dale Miller Youth. I’m asking you to put it to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers 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 Dale Miller Youth (Illinois) 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 Dale Miller Youth, Illinois
Dear Richard J. Durbin, I’m a constituent in Illinois. I tried to camp at Dale Miller Youth, Illinois, and couldn’t. All 1 sites at Dale Miller Youth 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. Dale Miller Youth keeps none, and that’s a choice somebody made rather than a rule. I’m not asking you to run Dale Miller Youth. I’m asking you to put it to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers 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 Dale Miller Youth (Illinois) 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 Dale Miller Youth, Illinois
Dear Tammy Duckworth, I’m a constituent in Illinois. I tried to camp at Dale Miller Youth, Illinois, and couldn’t. All 1 sites at Dale Miller Youth 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. Dale Miller Youth keeps none, and that’s a choice somebody made rather than a rule. I’m not asking you to run Dale Miller Youth. I’m asking you to put it to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers 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 Dale Miller Youth (Illinois) via campanac.com