Gill Point
- Right now
- Closedrecreation.gov lists every site closed this weekend, read 16:03 UTC
The place
the agency’s own description · what’s there · 7 notices
In the agency’s own words
Gill Point Recreation Area is a rural park on the northern end of J. Strom Thurmond Lake, off Georgia State Highway 79. The 70,000 acre lake and its 1,000+ miles of shoreline provide excellent boating, water skiing, swimming, fishing, hiking and picnicking opportunities. Keep reading
Recreation
Thurmond Lake provides some of the best fishing, hunting, and water sports in the southeastern United States. Anglers fish for largemouth bass, bream, crappie, catfish and striped bass. The large lake offers endless boating, water skiing, jet skiing, canoeing and swimming opportunities.
Facilities
Gill Point Recreation Area is a wooded day-use area with a group picnic shelter that can accommodate up to 24 people. Amenities include flush toilets, drinking water, a boat ramp and dock.
Natural Features
Hot, humid summers and mild, pleasant winters characterize this heavily wooded area on the shore of Thurmond Lake. A mixed pine and hardwood forest covers the site, providing summer shade and fall color. Elevation is 335' above sea level. Wildlife is abundant around the lake. Visitors regularly see southern bald eagles, migratory waterfowl, wild turkeys and whitetail deer.
Nearby Attractions
This quiet, rural area is very historic. The now-flooded town of Petersburg and the Nancy Hart Historical Site in Elbert County are nearby. The campground is 20 miles southeast of Elberton, Georgia, known as the Granite Capital of the World. Numerous parks and recreation areas lie around Thurmond Lake, providing additional boating, swimming, hunting, and hiking opportunities. Nearby cities house museums, art galleries, zoos, restaurants, and shopping areas. The Augusta National Golf Club hosts the Masters Golf Tournament annually the first week of April.
What the agency tells you
Park hours are 8 a.m. - 8:30 p.m.
All users must pay the $7 entry fee by the credit card machine. Pass must be displayed with the time and date visable during your visit. Acceptable passes are the USACE Annual Pass and the America the Beautiful – the National Parks and Federal Recreational Lands Passes.
Pets permitted on leash
Everything else this campground posts · 4
Alcoholic beverages are prohibited allowed
Glass and pets are prohibited on designated swimming beaches
Fires are prohibited
For shelter reservations: Please bring your confirmation letter to the park; it is required for check-in Shelter must be occupied by 2pm Users are not exempt from entrance fee The beach area and other park amenities are available for the reserving group as well as to the general public
Facilities
- Toilets
- Flush Toilets
- “…up to 24 people. Amenities include flush toilets, drinking water, a boat ramp and dock. Natural…”
- Drinking water
- Yes
- “…people. Amenities include flush toilets, drinking water, a boat ramp and dock. Natural Features Hot, humid…”
- Boat ramp
- Yes
- Stay limit
- 14 nights
- recreation.gov facility rule maxStay
Around the campground
- On the water
- Lake, Beach
- Accessible Swimming
- Boating
- Swimming
Nothing to book until it reopensread 16:03 UTC
recreation.gov lists every site closed this weekend
Every one of the next thirty nights is in recreation.gov’s record and not one site is being offered on any of them. That’s a campground closed or not yet released for booking, not a sold-out one.
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 · 11
What you actually pay
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
Why this page can’t say why
recreation.gov lists every site at Gill Point closed this Friday and Saturday night. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has published no closure notice we hold, so this page can’t say why, and it won’t fill the gap with a guess. A closed night isn’t a sold-out one: the reservations its record still carries were taken before the sites were closed.
There’s no notice to quote and no reason to argue with, so this page offers you the watch and the list below, and no letter.
Open within 60 miles · 1
The agency’s own word that these are open, not our reading of a season.
- Lick Fork Lake Recreation AreaSumter National Forest · 35 mi
recreation.gov availability, read 16:03 UTC · rules read Sep 9, 2026 · rates Oct 1, 2026 · How we know all this
The sites
1 records · the site map
All 1 records
| GPOI | 1 | day use | yes | 81 ft | $40 |
The agency files 1 more record here that isn’t a site for the night. It files it as day use. It’s in the table above, marked for what it is, and it isn’t 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
Hawe Creek16 mi
Bussey Point Campground17 mi
Leroys Ferry Campground17 mi
Amity Recreation Area22 mi
Winfield22 miFrom Lincolnton, GA, travel approximately 12 miles north on SR-79.
The weather
the next four days · the thirty-year normal
Next four days, and the thirty-year normal
Forecast
NWS forecast for Mount Carmel, SC
Typical weather
Typical October night 50°F, day 75°F.
Coldest month of the year: typical January night 32°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
who answers for it
Who answers for this land
Gill Point is in Georgia’s 12th congressional district. Its representative, Rick Allen (R), votes on the laws that decide what happens to this land. Public-lands grade so far: F. See every public-lands vote →