Emery Bay Campground
1Heads up1 fire 40 mi away
- Right now
- ClosedThe agency’s own sentence, quoted below
- A night
- $22When it reopens, per site
- Sites
- 28In the agency’s record
The place
the agency’s own description · what’s there · 11 notices
In the agency’s own words
Emery Bay Campground is located on the Hungry Horse Reservoir, high in the Rocky Mountains, less than 30 miles from the Continental Divide, surrounded by towering mountain peaks. Visitors can expect a variety of recreational activities, including fishing, boating, swimming, hiking, exploring and big game hunting. This Campground has 26 sites, 16 of which are reservable and 10 are walk-up sites. The stay limit is 16 consecutive days. Keep reading
Recreation
Boating is popular on the 27,750-acre reservoir, and a native boat ramp for smaller watercraft is available. Swimming and fishing are also popular pastimes, and anglers can expect a catch of cutthroat trout and other varieties.
Facilities
The campground offers 26 campsites, including some first come, first serve, available for tent and RV camping. Two group campsites are also available and can accommodate up to 75 guests on each separate loop. Each site is equipped with tables and campfire rings with grills. Vault toilets are provided. Also drinking water is provided after June 15th. Water is not a fill station so please come with your RV water full. An on-site host is available to answer any questions about the campground and surrounding areas.
Natural Features
The campground is situated along the massive Hungry Horse Reservoir, which was dammed to provide hydroelectric power and flood control to the area. It is the 10th highest dam in the United States and provides a stunning backdrop.
Nearby Attractions
Emery Bay Campground is just 15 miles southwest of the West Glacier entrance into Glacier National Park.
Charges & Cancellations
No cancellations can be made within 4 days of your arrival date through recreation.gov. You must wait for your reservation dates to pass then call Cheryl at 406-752-PWAI (7924) or 406-404-4164 to turn in a Refund Request. Refunds can then be considered, by the concessionaire, of Camping fees only. You will automatically forfeit the first nights fee. Any cancellations within 4 days of your arrival must be turned to Cheryl also, to get the information to the campground Host. Otherwise your site will be held for you and there will be no chance for a refund. All Considerations can only be made after your original reservation dates have passed. *No shows have no chance of a refund.
What the agency tells you
CHECK OUT TIME IS 11:00 A.M. Check in is at 2:00 p.m.
If a site is not available for reservation online, it is shown as a first-come, first-served (FF) or walk-in (W) site. These sites will be identified at the campground on maps and campsite post markers with a W. First-come, First-served sites may already be taken as this cannot be updated on the Recreation.gov website. You may try to call for availability.
Reserved sites will be held until check out time (11am) the day following your arrival date. Sites must be occupied by the checkout time of that following day to hold a reservation or the site will be forfeited and released.
Everything else this campground posts · 8
We do not allow reservation holders to change campsites and move to a Walk-up campsite upon arrival. Most of our campsites are available for advanced reservations, and you must occupy the site you reserve.
You are allowed 2 passenger vehicles per site, the first vehicle is included in the site fee and an extra vehicle charge of $5.00/vehicle per night will be collected at the campground. Sites that are identified as double occupancy can accommodate an additional camping unit. In this situation, you will be charged for each camper.
Potable water is available for filling containers after June 1st. Please fill RVs prior to arrival, as water is hauled by truck to campground.
There is now a 10 day stay limit on all Group sites, starting in 2022.
Drop Camping is illegal without a Forest Service permit. If you rent a camper it may not be delivered by the owner.
There is a food storage order in effect on the Flathead National Forest. Know how to store all attractants all the time. See your Campground Host for more information or visit: https://www.fs.usda.gov/detail/flathead/recreation/?cid=stelprdb5347448
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.
Click here for more information on the Flathead National Forest
Tents and rigs
- Sites
- 28 · 2 group
- Hookups
- None
- Longest rig
- 99 ft
- Accessible sites
- None listed
- Pets
- Allowed
- Campfires
- Allowed, barring fire bans
- Shade
- Every site
Facilities
- Toilets
- Vault Toilets
- “…tables and campfire rings with grills. Vault toilets are provided. Also drinking water is provided after…”
- Drinking water
- Yes
- “…grills. Vault toilets are provided. Also drinking water is provided after June 15th. Water is not a fill…”
- Boat ramp
- Yes
- Store
- Nearby
- Camp host
- On site
- recreation.gov lists “Host”
- Stay limit
- 32 nights
- recreation.gov facility rule maxStay
Around the campground
- On the water
- Reservoir, Coast
- Biking
- Boating
- Fishing
- Hiking
- Swimming
- Night sky · 447th darkest of 501 in MT
- Bortle 3
Nothing to book until it reopens
U.S. Forest Service’s own notice says why; it’s quoted below.
The closure above is the reading. We hold no availability snapshot for this campground, so there’s no thirty-night strip to draw under it.
Tell me when it reopens
Watch for it to come back
One email when the agency reopens it, plus More Than Just Parks dispatches. Unsubscribe any time.
We check the agency’s own record once an hour, at 40 minutes past, and write the first time it stops saying closed.
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.
Every line of the receipt · 14
What you actually pay
“the second vehicle is charged $5.00 upon arrival at the campground.” · the U.S. Forest Service’s own fee record
“No cancellations can be made within 4 days of your arrival date through recreation.gov. You must wait for your reservation dates to pass then call Cheryl at 406-752-PWAI (7924) or 406-404-4164 to turn in a Refund Request. Refunds can then be considered, by the concessionaire, of Camping fees only. You will automatic…” · this campground’s own no-show terms
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
What the agency said · 1
The area known as the FK&L Dispersed Camping Area (as shown on Exhibit A, attached below), west and south of Emery Bay Campground, is closed to public access from July 22, 2026 to July 22, 2027 for planned construction.
U.S. Forest Service · posted Jul 22, 2026
Filed as construction from the agency’s own words “construction”. That reading is ours.
Open within 60 miles · 1
The agency’s own word that these are open, not our reading of a season.
- St. Mary CampgroundGlacier National Park · 37 mi · 157 sites
rules read Sep 9, 2026 · rates Oct 1, 2026 · How we know all this
The sites
28 sites · which ones have room · the site map
The sites, ranked
from 28 mapped sitesAll 28 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. 26 of the 28 sites listed carry one, and a site whose type has no published rate sits out of the price rather than being called free.
| Bay Loop 2B | Emery Bay Grp 2 | group standard nonelectric | 99 ft | 202 ft | 225 ft | |
| EMERY BAY CAMPGROUND | 1 | standard nonelectric | 44 ft | 296 ft | 210 ft | $22 |
| EMERY BAY CAMPGROUND | 10 | standard nonelectric | 60 ft | 408 ft | $22 | |
| EMERY BAY CAMPGROUND | 11 | standard nonelectric | 30 ft | 60 ft | 416 ft | $22 |
| EMERY BAY CAMPGROUND | 12 | standard nonelectric | 64 ft | 472 ft | $22 | |
| EMERY BAY CAMPGROUND | 13 | standard nonelectric | 67 ft | 392 ft | $22 | |
| EMERY BAY CAMPGROUND | 14 | standard nonelectric | 32 ft | 389 ft | $22 | |
| EMERY BAY CAMPGROUND | 15 | standard nonelectric | 32 ft | 39 ft | 402 ft | $22 |
| EMERY BAY CAMPGROUND | 16 | standard nonelectric | 40 ft | 32 ft | 414 ft | $22 |
| EMERY BAY CAMPGROUND | 17 | standard nonelectric | 61 ft | 411 ft | $22 | |
| EMERY BAY CAMPGROUND | 18 | standard nonelectric | 52 ft | 452 ft | $22 | |
| EMERY BAY CAMPGROUND | 19 | standard nonelectric | 48 ft | 457 ft | $22 | |
| EMERY BAY CAMPGROUND | 2 | standard nonelectric | 285 ft | 167 ft | $22 | |
| EMERY BAY CAMPGROUND | 20 | standard nonelectric | 32 ft | 44 ft | 473 ft | $22 |
| EMERY BAY CAMPGROUND | 21 | standard nonelectric | 44 ft | 508 ft | $22 | |
| EMERY BAY CAMPGROUND | 22 | standard nonelectric | 48 ft | 554 ft | $22 | |
| EMERY BAY CAMPGROUND | 23 | standard nonelectric | 32 ft | 55 ft | 701 ft | $22 |
| EMERY BAY CAMPGROUND | 24 | standard nonelectric | 55 ft | 709 ft | $22 | |
| EMERY BAY CAMPGROUND | 25 | standard nonelectric | 82 ft | 735 ft | $22 | |
| EMERY BAY CAMPGROUND | 26 | standard nonelectric | 31 ft | 82 ft | 659 ft | $22 |
| EMERY BAY CAMPGROUND | 3 | standard nonelectric | 111 ft | 225 ft | $22 | |
| EMERY BAY CAMPGROUND | 4 | standard nonelectric | 111 ft | 168 ft | $22 | |
| EMERY BAY CAMPGROUND | 5 | standard nonelectric | 38 ft | 219 ft | 130 ft | $22 |
| EMERY BAY CAMPGROUND | 6 | standard nonelectric | 50 ft | 166 ft | 131 ft | $22 |
| EMERY BAY CAMPGROUND | 7 | standard nonelectric | 109 ft | 127 ft | $22 | |
| EMERY BAY CAMPGROUND | 8 | standard nonelectric | 109 ft | 103 ft | $22 | |
| EMERY BAY CAMPGROUND | 9 | standard nonelectric | 85 ft | 506 ft | $22 | |
| Forest Loop 1A | Emery Bay Group 1 | group standard nonelectric | 99 ft | 202 ft | 407 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.
25 of 28 listed
Getting there
the map and the coordinate · the agency’s directions · the phone number
Where it is
Lost Johnny Point CampgroundFlathead National Forest · 1.7 mi
Lost Johnny CampgroundFlathead National Forest · 2.0 mi
Doris Creek CampgroundFlathead National Forest · 2.4 mi
Lid Creek CampgroundFlathead National Forest · 3.9 mi
Riverside Campground (MT)Flathead National Forest · 7.4 mi
Murray Bay Campground (MT)Flathead National Forest · 7.7 miFrom Martin City, Montana, turn off Highway 2 and continue on the main road through the town heading south. This road becomes East Side Reservoir Road. Continue for about 6 miles into the campground.
The weather
the next four days · the thirty-year normal
Next four days, and the thirty-year normal
Forecast
NWS forecast for Martin City, MT
Typical weather
Typical October night 35°F, day 52°F.
Coldest month of the year: typical February night 20°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
Emery Bay 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 →