Hawe Creek
- Right now
- Closedrecreation.gov lists every site closed this weekend, read 16:03 UTC
- A night
- $28–$32When it reopens, per site
- Sites
- 34In the agency’s record
The place
the agency’s own description · what’s there · 15 notices
In the agency’s own words
Hawe Creek Campground is located on J. Strom Thurmond Lake, one mile from the Dorn Sportfishing Facility, one of the largest in the southeast. Camping at Hawe Creek is ripe with many different opportunities for relaxation, skill-building, family bonding, and nature appreciation. The 70,000+ acre lake and 1,000+ miles of shoreline are prime for activities that facilitate such opportunities such as boating, water skiing, swimming, fishing, kayaking, hiking, biking, bird watching, and so much more of course! Experience the quiet and relaxing outdoors at this quaint 34 site campground nestled in South Carolina. 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 great conditions for exciting activities such as boating, water skiing, jet skiing, canoeing, and swimming. When recreating at Thurmond Lake, we hope to give our visitors opportunities to bond, appreciate nature, relieve stress, improve skills, and improve physical fitness.
Facilities
Hawe Creek campground features a gatehouse with important campground information and two bathhouses with flushing toilets and showers. There is a boat ramp and courtesy dock with a nearby pit toilet. For camper convenience, there is a dump station and dumpsters in the campground.
Natural Features
Water/ Land: Hawe Creek campground is on the shoreline of the J Strom Thurmond lake that is over 70,000 acres, and surrounded with a mix of pine and hardwood trees which offer shade and visual interest. Wildlife: Wildlife is abundant around the lake. Visitors regularly see southern bald eagles, migratory waterfowl, neo-tropical birds, wild turkeys, and whitetail deer. Weather/ Climate: Average temperatures during the camping season starts out at 75 degrees Fahrenheit and peaks in July at 91 degrees Fahrenheit. May receives the least amount of rainfall on average, but increased rainfall for June, July, and August.
Nearby Attractions
Savannah Lakes Village is just a few minutes away, with lodging, dining and shopping. Golf enthusiasts will appreciate the nearby courses at Hickory Knob State Park, within five miles of Hawe Creek. 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
Gates open at 7:00am and close at 10:00pm. Combination lock codes will be issued to registered campers at check-in. If you need to leave due to an emergency and have trouble opening the gate, please notify the on-duty camp host.
Check-out time is 2 p.m. Starting January 1, 2025 check-out time will be 1 p.m. Check-in time is 3 p.m. Please call ahead to confirm early check-in.
No more than 12 campers allowed per site, and 4 vehicles per site if space allows. If vehicles do not fit, vehicles must be parked at the overflow lot.
Everything else this campground posts · 12
One wheeled camping unit (RV, Camper, Camper van/truck, etc) per single site and must be parked on impact pad. Tents are restricted to impact pad.
Scooters, UTVs, and ATVs are prohibited; however, golf carts are allowed per campground rules. See Park Attendant at the campground gatehouse for more information.
Maximum stay is 14-days within 30 day period. Changing names on a reservation, changing campsites, or making multiple reservations in order to stay over 14-days is prohibited and applicable across USACE campgrounds. Violaters may have reservations cancelled.
Alcohol is prohibited
Keep your campsite and campground clean. Keep your trash contained and frequently remove trash from campsite (dumpsters located within campground). Do not leave litter in fire ring or on campsite upon check out.
Gray water (any wastewater from sinks, dishwashing, bathing, etc) or other waste water such as black water must be disposed of properly at campground dump station.
All pets must be penned, caged, or on a leash no longer than 6 feet; pets are prohibited on swim beaches, playgrounds, and in restrooms. You MUST clean up after your pet!
Fireworks and firearms are prohibited.
All shorelines adjacent to campsites are public property.
For current lake conditions, contact 1-800-533-3478 ext. 1147
For campfires, use only dead wood gathered from the ground and contain fire in designated fire rings or grills only. Don't Move Firewood: Protect your forests from tree-killing pests by buying your firewood locally and burning it on-site. Visit Dontmovefirewood.org for further information.
For a complete set of rules and regulations concerning, please refer to Title 36, Chapter III, Part 327 - Rules and Regulations Governing Public Use of Corps of Engineers Water Resources Development Projects.
Tents and rigs
- Sites
- 34
- Hookups
- 32 electric, 34 water
- Longest rig
- 45 ft
- Accessible sites
- None listed
- Pets
- Allowed
- Shade
- Every site
Facilities
- Toilets
- Flush Toilets · Pit Toilets
- “…information and two bathhouses with flushing toilets and showers. There is a boat ramp and courtesy dock… / …ramp and courtesy dock with a nearby pit toilet. For camper convenience, there is a dump station…”
- Showers
- Yes, the record doesn’t say what kind
- “Facilities Hawe Creek campground features a gatehouse with important campground information and two bathhouses with flushing toilets and showers.”
- Dump station
- Yes
- recreation.gov lists “Dump Station”
- Boat ramp
- Yes
- Stay limit
- 14 nights
- recreation.gov facility rule maxStay
Around the campground
- On the water
- Lake, Creek, Beach
- Biking
- Birding
- Boating
- Fishing
- Hiking
- Kayaking
- Swimming
- Water access
- Wildlife viewing
- Night sky · 12th darkest of 37 in SC
- Bortle 4
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 Hawe Creek 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 · 2
The agency’s own word that these are open, not our reading of a season.
- Lick Fork Lake Recreation AreaSumter National Forest · 19 mi
- Brick House Campground (SC)Sumter National Forest · 56 mi · 24 sites
recreation.gov availability, read 16:03 UTC · rules read Oct 1, 2026 · rates Oct 1, 2026 · How we know all this
The sites
34 sites · which ones have room · the site map
The sites, ranked
from 32 mapped sitesAll 34 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. 32 of the 34 sites listed carry one, and a site whose type has no published rate sits out of the price rather than being called free.
| HCRE | 01 | standard electric | 36 ft | 50 amp | 225 ft | 140 ft | $28–$32 |
| HCRE | 02 | standard electric | 36 ft | 50 amp | 137 ft | 94 ft | $28–$32 |
| HCRE | 03 | standard electric | 45 ft | 50 amp | 178 ft | 129 ft | $28–$32 |
| HCRE | 04 | standard electric | 38 ft | 50 amp | 150 ft | 183 ft | $28–$32 |
| HCRE | 05 | standard electric | 40 ft | 50 amp | 150 ft | 135 ft | $28–$32 |
| HCRE | 06 | standard electric | 34 ft | 50 amp | 161 ft | 152 ft | $28–$32 |
| HCRE | 07 | standard electric | 36 ft | 50 amp | 130 ft | 92 ft | $28–$32 |
| HCRE | 08 | standard electric | 45 ft | 50 amp | 130 ft | 99 ft | $28–$32 |
| HCRE | 09 | standard electric | 45 ft | 50 amp | 178 ft | 123 ft | $28–$32 |
| HCRE | 10 | standard electric | 40 ft | 50 amp | 137 ft | 109 ft | $28–$32 |
| HCRE | 11 | standard electric | 40 ft | 50 amp | 140 ft | 119 ft | $28–$32 |
| HCRE | 12 | standard electric | 40 ft | 50 amp | 140 ft | 149 ft | $28–$32 |
| HCRE | 13 | standard electric | 36 ft | 50 amp | 164 ft | 137 ft | $28–$32 |
| HCRE | 14 | standard electric | 36 ft | 50 amp | 159 ft | 109 ft | $28–$32 |
| HCRE | 15 | standard electric | 38 ft | 50 amp | 112 ft | 85 ft | $28–$32 |
| HCRE | 16 | standard electric | 45 ft | 50 amp | 112 ft | 39 ft | $28–$32 |
| HCRE | 17 | standard electric | 36 ft | 50 amp | 124 ft | 19 ft | $28–$32 |
| HCRE | 18 | standard electric | 38 ft | 50 amp | 87 ft | 49 ft | $28–$32 |
| HCRE | 19 | standard electric | 45 ft | 50 amp | 87 ft | 69 ft | $28–$32 |
| HCRE | 20 | standard electric | 40 ft | 50 amp | 95 ft | 82 ft | $28–$32 |
| HCRE | 21 | standard electric | 36 ft | 50 amp | 141 ft | 128 ft | $28–$32 |
| HCRE | 22 | standard electric | 40 ft | 50 amp | 122 ft | 134 ft | $28–$32 |
| HCRE | 23 | standard electric | 45 ft | 50 amp | 122 ft | 107 ft | $28–$32 |
| HCRE | 24 | type not stated | 45 ft | 50 amp | 133 ft | ||
| HCRE | 25 | type not stated | 36 ft | 50 amp | 149 ft | ||
| HCRE | 26 | standard electric | 36 ft | 30 amp | 94 ft | 60 ft | $28–$32 |
| HCRE | 27 | standard electric | 30 ft | 30 amp | 94 ft | 56 ft | $28–$32 |
| HCRE | 28 | standard electric | 34 ft | 30 amp | 142 ft | 119 ft | $28–$32 |
| HCRE | 29 | standard electric | 40 ft | 30 amp | 88 ft | 109 ft | $28–$32 |
| HCRE | 30 | standard electric | 40 ft | 30 amp | 88 ft | 49 ft | $28–$32 |
| HCRE | 31 | standard electric | 30 ft | 30 amp | 133 ft | 63 ft | $28–$32 |
| HCRE | 32 | standard electric | 38 ft | 30 amp | 91 ft | 116 ft | $28–$32 |
| HCRE | 33 | standard electric | 32 ft | 30 amp | 91 ft | 119 ft | $28–$32 |
| HCRE | 34 | standard electric | 32 ft | 30 amp | 154 ft | 148 ft | $28–$32 |
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 34 listed
Getting there
the map and the coordinate · the agency’s directions · the phone number
Where it is
Bussey Point Campground3.5 mi
Leroys Ferry Campground3.5 mi
Parksville6.1 mi
Modoc10 miMorrow Bridge and Midway Seasonal CampsSumter National Forest · 12 mi
Ridge Road12 mi1505 Chamberlains Ferry Rd, Mc Cormick, SC 29835
From the junction of HWY 221 and HWY 378 in McCormick, SC, travel southwest on US 378, then south 4 miles on Chamberlains Ferry Road. Road ends at campground.
The weather
the next four days · the thirty-year normal
Next four days, and the thirty-year normal
Forecast
NWS forecast for Plum Branch, SC
Typical weather
Typical October night 52°F, day 75°F.
Coldest month of the year: typical January night 34°F. Bring the bag rated for it.
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
Hawe Creek is in South Carolina’s 3rd congressional district. Its representative, Sheri Biggs (R), votes on the laws that decide what happens to this land. Public-lands grade so far: F. See every public-lands vote →