CAMPANAC.Powered by public lands intelligenceMore Than Just Parks
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U.S. Forest Service · Deerlodge National Forest · MT

Doney Cabin

Not on the booking systemrecreation.gov lists none of the 1 campsites the agency files here, in any month asked. Whatever these sites are, a reservation isn’t how you get one.

Reservable everywhere but bookable nowhere.Ask the agency →

Get directionsWhat it costs, and the rules
Right now
Nobody has saidNo season, no closure, no bookings to read
Sites
1None on recreation.gov
6,340 ftElevation
96 ftWater · Willow Creek
10.6 miNW of Deer Lodge, MT
22%Tree cover
Bortle 2Night sky · 369th darkest of 501 in MT

The place

the agency’s own description · what’s there · 1 notices

In the agency’s own words

This cabin is currently undergoing some repairs and will be rented again in the near future. Keep reading

Recreation

Facilities Natural Features Nearby Attractions

Source: Recreation.gov data (RIDB), full extract · Aug 23, 2026

What the agency tells you

Rule

This cabin is currently undergoing some repairs and will be rented again in the near future.

Source: recreation.gov facility notices, quoted verbatim · Sep 9, 2026

Tents and rigs

Sites
1
Hookups
None
Accessible sites
None listed
Shade
Every site
Source: Recreation.gov campsite records · Aug 23, 2026

Around the campground

Biking
Hiking
Hunting
Wildlife viewing
Winter sports
Source: Recreation.gov activity records · Aug 23, 2026

Nothing on the booking system

recreation.gov lists none of the 1 campsites the agency files here. Whatever these sites are, a reservation isn’t how you get one.

No availability snapshot inside the last 36 hours, so this page draws nothing rather than ageing a reading into fiction.

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
Max stay7 nightsthe facility record
If plans change$10 to cancel$10 to change a reservationrecreation.gov’s schedule
Runs itU.S. Forest ServiceBooked through recreation.govthe agency’s record
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.

Free forever, no booking kickbacks.
Every line of the receipt · 13

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.
The cabin can be rented for up to seven consecutive nights.
All fees are non-refundable.
Any changes to scheduled dates may be assessed an additional fee by the National Recreation Reservation Service.
The cabin is available year-round.
The booking feerecreation.gov
Reservation fee, booked online$8
One fee per reservation, however many nights you book, and it’s non-refundable. $9 if you book by phone, $3 in person.
Pass discounts only apply to the recreation (or use) fee for the facility. Other charges such as electricity or water hookups, reservation or other fees are not eligible for a discount.
What a stay costs
The agency publishes no nightly rate for this campground, so there’s nothing to add the $8 booking fee to. We won’t total a receipt with a number missing from it.
If your plans changerecreation.gov
Change fee, moving to dates outside your booking$10
Cancellation fee$10
Cancelling the day before, or the day of$10 + your first night
No-show$20 + your first night

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 · 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: Recreation.gov data (RIDB), full extract · Aug 23, 2026

rules read Sep 9, 2026 · record Aug 23, 2026 · How we know all this

Seen something wrong here? Tell us.

The sites

1 sites · the site map

All 1 sites

1 of 1 sites located
Type not stated1
001
Aerial · Esri World Imagery
Sites: recreation.gov (RIDB), coordinates as published · Aug 23, 2026
Imagery: Esri World Imagery
AREA DONEY CABIN001type not stated120 ft

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.

Source: Recreation.gov data (RIDB), full extract · Aug 23, 2026

Getting there

the map and the coordinate · the phone number
Coordinate46.44823, -112.96114
The phone406-859-3211
The agency’s pageOfficial page ↗

Where it is

Source: Recreation.gov data (RIDB), full extract · Aug 23, 2026

The weather

the next four days · the thirty-year normal

Next four days, and the thirty-year normal

Forecast

This Afternoon57°Mostly Sunny
Tonight41°Partly Cloudy
Saturday59°Mostly Sunny
Saturday Night37°Partly Cloudy

NWS forecast for Garrison, MT

Source: National Weather Service, MSO forecast office · Oct 16, 2026

Typical weather

Typical October night 27°F, day 54°F.

Coldest month of the year: typical December night 7°F, below freezing. Bring a bag rated colder than that, and expect ice in the water bottle.

90°32°0°

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: BUTTE BERT MOONEY AP, MT (USW00024135), 40 miles away and 834 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 · a letter you can send

What threatens this place

watch

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

Source: MTJP Threatened Lands map · Oct 4, 2026

Who answers for this land

Ryan Zinke, official portrait

Doney Cabin is in Montana’s 1st congressional district. Its representative, Ryan Zinke (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
Who can change it · 3
Reservable on paper, bookable nowhere

The agency’s own record marks Doney Cabin reservable, and recreation.gov lists none of its campsites. The draft asks why, and what it would take to fix it.

Read the draft, or change the wording
To Ryan K. Zinke

Asks them to put the same question to the agency in writing.

Subject Doney Cabin is reservable and not bookable

Dear Ryan K. Zinke,

I’m a constituent in Montana’s 1st district. Doney Cabin, Deerlodge National Forest, Montana is a federal campground the U.S. Forest Service records as reservable, and recreation.gov lists none of its 1 campsites, in any month asked.

I’m asking you to put one question to the U.S. Forest Service in writing: why isn’t Doney Cabin on the booking system, and what would it take to put it there?

Road trips and camping on public land are part of how this country knows itself. It’s where a lot of people meet the place they live in for the first time, and it has never been something you had to be well off, or well organised six months in advance, to do.

Sent about Doney Cabin (Deerlodge National Forest, Montana) via campanac.com
To Steve Daines

Asks them to put the same question to the agency in writing.

Subject Doney Cabin is reservable and not bookable

Dear Steve Daines,

I’m a constituent in Montana. Doney Cabin, Deerlodge National Forest, Montana is a federal campground the U.S. Forest Service records as reservable, and recreation.gov lists none of its 1 campsites, in any month asked.

I’m asking you to put one question to the U.S. Forest Service in writing: why isn’t Doney Cabin on the booking system, and what would it take to put it there?

Road trips and camping on public land are part of how this country knows itself. It’s where a lot of people meet the place they live in for the first time, and it has never been something you had to be well off, or well organised six months in advance, to do.

Sent about Doney Cabin (Deerlodge National Forest, Montana) via campanac.com
To Tim Sheehy

Asks them to put the same question to the agency in writing.

Subject Doney Cabin is reservable and not bookable

Dear Tim Sheehy,

I’m a constituent in Montana. Doney Cabin, Deerlodge National Forest, Montana is a federal campground the U.S. Forest Service records as reservable, and recreation.gov lists none of its 1 campsites, in any month asked.

I’m asking you to put one question to the U.S. Forest Service in writing: why isn’t Doney Cabin on the booking system, and what would it take to put it there?

Road trips and camping on public land are part of how this country knows itself. It’s where a lot of people meet the place they live in for the first time, and it has never been something you had to be well off, or well organised six months in advance, to do.

Sent about Doney Cabin (Deerlodge National Forest, Montana) via campanac.com
How we know this · 4
Contacts: Contact forms from @unitedstates/congress-legislators · Sep 9, 2026
The figures in these drafts: Navy Ford (CVN-78) Class Aircraft Carrier Program: Background and Issues for Congress (CRS Report RS20643) · Updated December 4, 2025 · “The ship’s final procurement cost was $13,316.5 million (i.e., about $13.3 billion) in then-year dollars.”
The figures in these drafts: Salary Table 2026-GS, Incorporating the 1% General Schedule Increase, Effective January 2026 (U.S. Office of Personnel Management) · Effective January 2026 · “Grade 5, Step 1: $34,799 (annual rate, before locality pay).”
The figures in these drafts: Update to Civilian Position Full Fringe Benefit Cost Factor, Federal Pay Raise Assumptions, and Inflation Factors used in OMB Circular No. A-76 (OMB Memorandum M-08-13) · March 11, 2008 · “the civilian position full fringe benefit cost factor needs to be adjusted downward, from 36.45 percent to 36.25 percent”

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: the number below is the only way to be sure.
Sites on recreation.gov: recreation.gov’s own month availability payload for this facility, asked for October 2026 and November 2026. It names 0 of the 1 campsites the agency files here, and every one of them carries an answer either way. A campground nobody has read carries no answer at all, never a no. · Oct 14, 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: 0.075 mcd/m² of artificial all-sky glow, ranked against the 501 rated federal campgrounds in Montana · 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 place of any size: Garrison, MT, 6.2 mi SW (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