Dorr Skeels Campground
1Heads up1 fire 45 mi away
- Right now
- Nobody has saidNo season, no closure, no bookings to read
- A night
- $16From, per site
- Sites
- 8All of them booked ahead
The place
the agency’s own description · what’s there · 4 notices
In the agency’s own words
Dorr Skeels Campground is located 13 miles south of Troy on Hwy 56. The Dorr Skeels Campground has 8 overnight campsites, including one host site and 2 day use sites with tables and fire rings. Amenities include potable water, vault toilets, swimming area with beach and a fully developed boat ramp with dock. A security gate is closed at 10:00 pm and opened at 07:00 am daily by the camphost. Keep reading
Recreation
The campground has a boat ramp with dock, a beach area and bouyed off swimming area. There are several day use sites available for guests.
Facilities
The campground has 8 overnight camp sites, including one host site and 2 day use sites, all with tables and fire rings. Most sites offer an average length of 30 feet. Vault toilets, garbage service and drinking water are available during the peak season. The campground campsites are not currently on the reservation system.
Natural Features
At an elevation of 2,344 feet, the campground is nestled among mature pines at the north end of Bull Lake in the Bull Lake Area. The lake spans 1,162 acres. The lake is popular with recreationists as well as fisherman. Many species of fish can be found there including brook trout, bull trout, kokanee, small and large mouth bass, pike, suckers, whitefish and perch.
Nearby Attractions
The campground lies along the western edge of the Cabinet Mountains Wilderness and is just north of an ancient cedar grove, Ross Creek Cedars.
What the agency tells you
16 day stay limit
Non-reservable sites are first come-first serve. Saving sites is prohibited.
If your extra vehicle is at the site longer than 30 minutes, you will need to pay the $5 extra vehicle fee or move the vehicle to the overflow parking area.
Everything else this campground posts · 1
Don't Move Firewood: Prevent the spread of tree-killing pests by obtaining firewood near your destination and burning it on-site. For more information visit dontmovefirewood.org.
Tents and rigs
- Sites
- 8
- Hookups
- None
- Paved pads
- 7 of 8
- Accessible sites
- None listed
- Pets
- Allowed
- Campfires
- Allowed, barring fire bans
- Shade
- Every site
Facilities
- Toilets
- Vault Toilets
- “…rings. Amenities include potable water, vault toilets, swimming area with beach and a fully developed…”
- Drinking water
- Yes
- DRINKING WATER (PEAK SEASON) on 1 of 10 campsite records
- Boat ramp
- Yes
- Camp host
- On site
- recreation.gov lists “Host”
- Stay limit
- 48 nights
- recreation.gov facility rule maxStay
Around the campground
- On the water
- Lake, Creek, Beach
- Boating
- Swimming
No reading yet, book on recreation.gov
Every site here is reservable, and the record lists none held back for anyone who drives up.
No availability snapshot inside the last 36 hours, so this page draws nothing rather than ageing a reading into fiction.
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.
We make nothing when you book. The link goes straight to the government.
Every line of the receipt · 13
What you actually pay
“If your extra vehicle is at the site longer than 30 minutes, you will need to pay the $5 extra vehicle fee or move the vehicle to the overflow parking area.” · the U.S. Forest Service’s own agency notice
Derived by CAMPANAC: the agency’s published rate for this season, $16 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
rules read Sep 9, 2026 · rates Oct 1, 2026 · How we know all this
The sites
10 records · which ones have room · the site map
The sites, ranked
from 9 mapped sitesAll 10 records
The price is derived by CAMPANAC, not published per site: the per-night rate this campground publishes for each site’s own site type. 8 of the 10 sites listed carry one, and a site whose type has no published rate sits out of the price rather than being called free.
| A | 1 Day Use | day use | 92 ft | 56 ft | $16 |
| A | 10 | standard nonelectric | $16 | ||
| A | 2 Day Use | day use | 92 ft | 97 ft | $16 |
| A | 3 | standard nonelectric | 87 ft | 129 ft | $16 |
| A | 4 | standard nonelectric | 75 ft | 102 ft | $16 |
| A | 5 | standard nonelectric | 75 ft | 84 ft | $16 |
| A | 6 | standard nonelectric | 107 ft | 64 ft | $16 |
| A | 7 | standard nonelectric | 107 ft | 170 ft | $16 |
| A | 8 | standard nonelectric | 153 ft | 176 ft | $16 |
| A | 9 | standard nonelectric | 153 ft | 221 ft | $16 |
The agency files 2 more records here that aren’t sites for the night. It files them as day use. They’re in the table above, marked for what they are, and none of them is counted as a site.
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
Bull River Guard StationKaniksu National Forest · 11 miBig Eddy Campground14 mi
Bull River PavilionKaniksu National Forest · 16 miFrom Troy follow Hwy 2 east for 3 miles to the junction with Hwy 56. Turn and follow Hwy 56 for approximately 13 miles, turn right on Dorr Skeels road 1117 and follow to the campground. Laundry, gas, ice and store are located in Troy.
The weather
the next four days · the thirty-year normal
Next four days, and the thirty-year normal
Forecast
NWS forecast for Bull Lake, MT
Typical weather
Typical October night 34°F, day 55°F.
Coldest month of the year: typical December night 23°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
What threatens this place
You’re camping on ground somebody wants. We track the threats and the comment deadlines.
Who answers for this land
Dorr Skeels Campground 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 →