CAMPANAC.Powered by public lands intelligenceMore Than Just Parks
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U.S. Forest Service · St. Joe National Forest · ID

Emerald Creek Campground

1Heads up1 fire 39 mi away
Wildfire
Nugget Hill fire · 39 mi away · 45 acres · updated Oct 17, 2026
Fires: NIFC/IRWIN via MTJP wildfire tracker · Oct 17, 2026
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
$10From, per site
Drawn from the record · 2,860 ft · 66% tree cover · East Fork Emerald Creek within reach · Bortle 2 sky
2,860 ftElevation
347 ftWater · East Fork Emerald Creek
23.2 miSE of St. Maries, ID
66%Tree cover
Bortle 2Night sky · 323rd darkest of 523 in ID

The place

the agency’s own description · what’s there

In the agency’s own words

Emerald Creek Campground features 18 camp units, potable water, and vault toilets. a short distance from the campground. The Garnet Area is one of our most popular recreation sites where, for a small fee, one can dig for gem quality star garnets. Mosquitos can be prolific throughout the season, consider bringing bug repellent.

Source: USFS Enterprise Data Warehouse · Aug 24, 2026

Facilities

Toilets
Vault Toilets
“…18 camp units, potable water, and vault toilets. a short distance from the campground. The Garnet…”
Drinking water
Yes
“…Creek Campground features 18 camp units, potable water, and vault toilets. a short distance from the…”
Source: read from the agency description, shown above · Sep 12, 2026

Around the campground

On the water
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$10Per site, fromthe agency’s fee record
A weekend$20DerivedFriday 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$10
Night ($5 for third vehicle)$10
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$10
A weekend, Friday and Saturday, fromDerived$20

Derived by CAMPANAC: the lowest per-night amount the agency’s fee record states ($10), 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
Coordinate47.00788, -116.32584

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

Overnight37°Partly Cloudy
Saturday62°Mostly Sunny1% rain
Saturday Night32°Mostly Clear then Areas Of Frost1% rain
Sunday60°Widespread Frost then Mostly Sunny

NWS forecast for Fernwood, ID

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

Typical weather

Typical October night 36°F, day 59°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.

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 Augusts are colder than the August line. The seven-day forecast above answers the other question.

Measured at: SAINT MARIES, ID (USC00108062), 24 miles away and 709 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

who answers for it

Who answers for this land

Russ Fulcher, official portrait

Emerald Creek Campground is in Idaho’s 1st congressional district. Its representative, Russ Fulcher (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: 0.058 mcd/m² of artificial all-sky glow, ranked against the 523 rated federal campgrounds in Idaho · 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: Fernwood, ID, 7 mi SSE (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