Ellery Creek
- Right now
- Closed for the seasonOut of the season the agency publishes
- A night
- $30From, per site
- Sites
- 2019 on recreation.gov
- Season
- April 1 – September 12Open April 1 through September 12
The place
the agency’s own description · what’s there · 10 notices
In the agency’s own words
Ellery Creek is located on the McCloud Arm of Shasta Lake. The campground is terraced, providing views of the lake from all of the lower sites and some of the upper sites. At certain water levels, boats can be moored on the shore within sight of the campground, making Ellery Creek a very popular place to camp among boaters. Keep reading
Recreation
A public boat ramp is located approximately 4 miles away at Hirz Bay, but informal mooring is allowed at Ellery Creek if the water levels are sufficient. This area is popular for water skiing and jet skiing. Lake Shasta offers excellent fishing for trout, catfish, Chinook salmon, crappie, bluegill, white sturgeon, brown bullhead and bass.
Facilities
Each site offers fair to good privacy and sufficient shade provided by the deciduous trees in the campground. There are two sets of vault toilets and water spigots throughout the camp. Each site has lockers for food, picnic tables, fire rings with grills, paved parking spurs and tent pads. There are no showers available or electric/water hookups for trailers. All sites at this campground can accommodate small trailers as well as tents.
Natural Features
Shasta-Trinity is the largest national forest in California with a diverse landscape encompassing five wilderness areas, hundreds of mountain lakes and 6,278 miles of streams and rivers. Lake Shasta sits at an elevation of 1,067 feet, with 365 miles of shoreline punctuated by steep mountains blanketed in manzanita and evergreens. A snow-capped Mount Shasta, the second-tallest mountain in the Cascade Range, looms in the distance. Lakeside sites at Ellery Creek offer excellent views and access to the water. Wildlife is abundant in the area.
Nearby Attractions
The Lake Shasta Caverns are also located on the McCloud Arm of Shasta Lake in an area know as the Grey Rocks. Tours are given daily at this privately owned facility. The nearby Hirz Mountain Lookout offers panoramic views of Mt. Shasta, Mt. Lassen and the surrounding area at an elevation of 3,500 feet. The nearest store is 21 miles away in Lakehead.
What the agency tells you
The facility is open for walk-ins from April 1- Sept. 10
There is an additional $17 fee for the launch ramp at Hirz Bay
Average maximum trailer size is 30 feet
Everything else this campground posts · 7
Poison oak is abundant throughout the forest
Store food and scented toiletries in the provided bear-proof lockers; be prepared to hang food from the trees if necessary
There is a $12 extra vehicle fee collected at the campground after the first car for single sites
Click here for further information on this campground
Click here for more information about Shasta-Trinity National Forest
Don't Move Firewood: Protect California's forests from tree-killing pests by buying your firewood locally and burning it on-site. For more information visit firewood.ca.gov.
Check-in time 3 P.M. and Check-out 2 P.M.
Tents and rigs
- Sites
- 20
- Hookups
- None
- Longest rig
- 40 ft
- Paved pads
- All
- Accessible sites
- None listed
- Pets
- Allowed
- Shade
- Every site
Facilities
- Toilets
- Vault Toilets
- “…in the campground. There are two sets of vault toilets and water spigots throughout the camp. Each site…”
- Showers
- None at this campground
- “There are no showers available or electric/water hookups for trailers.”
- Drinking water
- Yes
- “…There are two sets of vault toilets and water spigots throughout the camp. Each site has lockers for…”
- Boat ramp
- Yes
Around the campground
- On the water
- Lake, River, Creek, Beach, Coast
- Boating
- Fishing
- Water sports
- Night sky · 449th darkest of 1,201 in CA
- Bortle 3
No reading yet, book on recreation.gov
recreation.gov lists 19 of the 20 campsites the agency files here. The rest aren’t on its booking system, so a reservation won’t get you one.
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.
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 · 26
What you actually pay
“There is a $12 extra vehicle fee collected at the campground after the first car for single sites” · the U.S. Forest Service’s own agency notice
Derived by CAMPANAC: the agency’s published rate for this season, $30 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 Sep 10, 2026 · How we know all this
The sites
20 sites · which ones have room · the site map
The sites, ranked
from 14 mapped sitesAll 20 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. 20 of the 20 sites listed carry one, and a site whose type has no published rate sits out of the price rather than being called free.
Measured shade is NLCD Tree Canopy Cover 2024 (USDA Forest Service / MRLC) read at the site’s own coordinate, 27% canopy or more, and only for the sites the agency gave no Shade value. It never changes the agency’s own shaded count beside it.
| AREA ELLERY CREEK | 001 | standard nonelectric | 20 ft | 94 ft | 222 ft | $30 |
| AREA ELLERY CREEK | 002 | standard nonelectric | 20 ft | 94 ft | 288 ft | $30 |
| AREA ELLERY CREEK | 003 | standard nonelectric | 30 ft | $30 | ||
| AREA ELLERY CREEK | 004 | standard nonelectric | 30 ft | $30 | ||
| AREA ELLERY CREEK | 005 | standard nonelectric | 30 ft | $30 | ||
| AREA ELLERY CREEK | 006 | standard nonelectric | 30 ft | $30 | ||
| AREA ELLERY CREEK | 007 | standard nonelectric | 30 ft | 160 ft | 399 ft | $30 |
| AREA ELLERY CREEK | 008 | standard nonelectric | 30 ft | 131 ft | 251 ft | $30 |
| AREA ELLERY CREEK | 009 | standard nonelectric | 30 ft | $30 | ||
| AREA ELLERY CREEK | 010 | standard nonelectric | 40 ft | 71 ft | 185 ft | $30 |
| AREA ELLERY CREEK | 011 | standard nonelectric | 35 ft | 58 ft | 209 ft | $30 |
| AREA ELLERY CREEK | 012 | standard nonelectric | 40 ft | 58 ft | 199 ft | $30 |
| AREA ELLERY CREEK | 013 | standard nonelectric | 30 ft | 88 ft | 244 ft | $30 |
| AREA ELLERY CREEK | 014 | standard nonelectric | 25 ft | 77 ft | 235 ft | $30 |
| AREA ELLERY CREEK | 015 | standard nonelectric | 25 ft | 76 ft | 260 ft | $30 |
| AREA ELLERY CREEK | 016 | standard nonelectric | 25 ft | 76 ft | 298 ft | $30 |
| AREA ELLERY CREEK | 017 | standard nonelectric | 20 ft | 81 ft | 280 ft | $30 |
| AREA ELLERY CREEK | 018 | standard nonelectric | 20 ft | 90 ft | 208 ft | $30 |
| AREA ELLERY CREEK | 019 | standard nonelectric | 40 ft | 147 ft | 170 ft | $30 |
| S&P | Single S&P | type not stated | 40 ft | $30 |
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
Where it is
Pine Point (Shasta Lake, CA)Whiskeytown Shasta-Trinity National Recreation Area · 0.9 mi
Hirz Mountain Lookout1.1 mi
McCloud BridgeWhiskeytown Shasta-Trinity National Recreation Area · 1.6 mi
Moore CreekWhiskeytown Shasta-Trinity National Recreation Area · 2.5 mi
Dekkas RockWhiskeytown Shasta-Trinity National Recreation Area · 2.8 miFrom Redding, California: Take I-5 to Gilman Road. From the north take the Salt Creek exit to Gilman Road. Go east for 16 miles to the campground entrance (located on the right hand side of the road between Moore Creek and Pine Point Campgrounds).
*The Map Driving Route link gives directions to mail office, not the campground.
The weather
the next four days · the thirty-year normal
Next four days, and the thirty-year normal
Forecast
NWS forecast for Lakehead, CA
Typical weather
Typical April night 48°F, day 70°F.
Daily high and lowDays with 0.10 in or moreOutside the published season
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
Roadless country, and what’s coming for it
You’re camping on ground somebody wants. We track the threats and the comment deadlines.
Who answers for this land
Ellery Creek is in California’s 1st congressional district. Whoever holds it votes on the laws that decide what happens to this land. See how its representative votes on public lands →
Our roster still carries Doug LaMalfa for this district and the current federal record doesn’t list them as sitting, so we’re not naming a representative here until the two agree.