CAMPANAC.Powered by public lands intelligenceMore Than Just Parks
The map
U.S. Forest Service · Chattahoochee National Forest · GA

Dockery Lake Recreation Area

The agency doesn’t say how you get a siteIts record carries no access type, so treat it as a place to phone before you drive.
Get directionsWhat it costs, and the rules
Right now
Nobody has saidNo season, no closure, no bookings to read
A night
$4From, per site
Drawn from the record · 2,720 ft · 88% tree cover · water within reach · Bortle 4 sky
2,720 ftElevation
2,659 ftWater · an unnamed stream
6.8 miN of Dahlonega, GA
88%Tree cover
Bortle 4Night sky · 50th darkest of 96 in GA

The place

the agency’s own description · what’s there

In the agency’s own words

Overlooking Dockery Lake and nestled deep within the mountains, Dockery Lake Recreation Area offers camping, hiking, picnicking and fishing for all ages. Dockery Lake Recreation Area consists of 10 camping sites. Each campsite is equipped with a tent pad, picnic table, lantern pole, and grill. There are no water hook-ups or electrical hook-ups or dump station available in the campground. Campsites are available on a first-come, first-serve basis. For those looking to spend the day at Dockery Lake, six lakefront picnic sites are available. These picnic sites can be accessed from the day-use parking lot. Keep reading

Hikers can enjoy the Lakeshore Trail a 0.5 mile easy loop trail around Dockery Lake. The Dockery Lake Trail is another trail which begins in the Dockery Lake Recreation Area, west of the lake. The trail is 3.5 miles and is an easy to strenuous trail. This blue blazed trail crosses several creeks, and then climbs steeply up to the Appalachian Trail in Miller Gap. A portion of this trail is within the Blood Mountain Wilderness.

Source: USFS Enterprise Data Warehouse · Aug 24, 2026

Facilities

Drinking water
None, bring your own
“…31 $8.00 per night/site Off Peak Season(no water): November 1 - January 1 $4.00 per night/site…”
Dump station
Yes
Source: Stated in the agency description
Water, toilets and showers: read from the agency fee text, shown above · Sep 12, 2026

Around the campground

On the water
Lake, Creek
Source: Stated in the agency description

Phone before you drive

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.

Booking window6 months outBooking opens 6 months ahead; today unlocks arrivals through April 16, 2027. The agency publishes no reservable season in the record we hold, so the window may close earlier than that.recreation.gov
A night$4Per site, fromthe agency’s fee record
A weekend$8DerivedFriday and Saturday, everything includedours, from the lines above
Runs itU.S. Forest Servicethe agency’s record
Directions
Every line of the receipt · 5

What you actually pay

The sign priceU.S. Forest Service
A night, from$4
Peak Season: April 1 - October 31 $8.00 per night/site Off Peak Season(no water): November 1 - January 1 $4.00 per night/site Closed: January 2 - March 31 Day Use Free
The booking feerecreation.gov
We hold no recreation.gov booking record for this campground, so we can’t say whether a booking fee applies.
What a stay costs
One night, fromDerived$4
A weekend, Friday and Saturday, fromDerived$8

Derived by CAMPANAC: the lowest per-night amount the agency’s fee record states ($4), and no booking fee, because this campground takes no reservations. A weekend here means Friday and Saturday night. Optional charges (an extra vehicle, a second tent, a dump-station fee) are listed separately and aren’t in this total.

How we know this receipt · 5
Sign price: Derived by CAMPANAC from the U.S. Forest Service fee record: a stated per-night amount only · Sep 7, 2026
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
Coordinate34.66413, -83.98129

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

Today59°Sunny
Tonight37°Clear
Sunday62°Sunny
Sunday Night37°Clear

NWS forecast for Dahlonega, GA

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

Typical weather

Typical October night 43°F, day 70°F.

Coldest month of the year: typical January night 25°F, below freezing. Bring a bag rated colder than that, and expect ice in the water bottle.

90°32°20°

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.

Measured at: BLAIRSVILLE EXP STN, GA (USC00090969), 13 miles away and 771 ft lower
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

What threatens this place

developing
Roadless
Miller Creek701 acres · 2 mi · inventoried roadless area
Roadless
Cedar Mountain1,083 acres · 5 mi · inventoried roadless area
Roadless
Boggs Creek2,073 acres · 6 mi · inventoried roadless area

You’re camping on ground somebody wants. We track the threats and the comment deadlines.

Source: MTJP Threatened Lands map · Sep 30, 2026

Who answers for this land

Rich McCormick, official portrait

Dockery Lake Recreation Area is in Georgia’s 7th congressional district. Its representative, Rich McCormick (R), votes on the laws that decide what happens to this land. Public-lands grade so far: F. 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: U.S. Forest Service publishes no season and no closure for this campground, and it takes no bookings we can read. That’s a gap in the record and not a locked gate.
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: 0.84 mcd/m² of artificial all-sky glow, ranked against the 96 rated federal campgrounds in Georgia · 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
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 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