Hidden View
1Heads up1 fire 41 mi away
- Right now
- Taking bookingsSites offered on 30 of the next 30 nights read 16:16 UTC
- A night
- $20–$60Across the site types the agency prices
- Sites
- 5753 on recreation.gov
The place
the agency’s own description · what’s there · 13 notices
In the agency’s own words
Hidden View Campground is located at Hensley Lake in the foothills of central California, 50 miles north of Fresno. The lake area offers many recreational opportunities, such as swimming, water skiing, fishing and hiking, and attracts a growing number of visitors per year. It is within a short drive to Yosemite, Kings Canyon and Sequoia National Parks, as well as Sierra National Forest. The 1,500-acre lake was created by the construction of Hidden Dam on the Fresno River. With over 20 miles of shoreline, it is a popular vacation spot for families and those who enjoy water activities. Keep reading
Recreation
The area is packed with opportunities for outdoor fun. Campers enjoy boating, water skiing and fishing on the water. Bank fishermen have easy access to the lake's shoreline. Lake fishing is particularly good in the coves where largemouth black bass, crappie, bluegill and catfish are found in abundance. Rainbow trout are stocked in the lake each winter. On the other side of the lake, there is a swim beach, a disc golf course and a hiking, mountain biking and equestrian trail. One hiking trail is located within walking distance of the campground. Educational programs are offered by request. Please call the Park Headquarters at 559-831-7040.
Facilities
Hidden View campground provides 53 campsites, including two group campsites. Some sites have electric hookups, and all campsites are located within walking distance of the lake and boat ramp. Campsites are highly variable. Please review site information carefully before making your reservation.
Natural Features
Hidden View is located on the shores of Hensley Lake and is surrounded by the oak woodlands of the Sierra Nevada foothills, offering a mixture of sun and shade. The area has significant historical value as it was once home to the Miwok and Yokut Native American Tribes. Contact Info For facility specific information, please call (559) 831-7040.
Nearby Attractions
Yosemite National Park is about one hour north, and Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks are about 1.5 hours southeast of the facility. Yosemite National Park Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks
What the agency tells you
Hensley Lake is a reservoir that feeds the Madera Irrigation System. Water levels are highest in the spring and can be quite low by mid-summer. You can check current lake levels here: https://www.spk-wc.usace.army.mil/fcgi-bin/midnight.py?days=0&report=HIDLVL
Hidden View Campground Entrance Gate is now operational. It will automatically close at 10PM and reopen at 6AM. To leave the campground, approach the gate slowly and it will open. It will NOT reopen until 6AM. If you arrive after close or leave/return before 6AM, you must park in the boat parking lot and wait until the gate reopens.
A one-wheeled camping unit (Camper / RV) limit per site is strictly enforced.
Everything else this campground posts · 10
A two-vehicle limit per site is strictly enforced (RVs are counted as a vehicle). No extra vehicles are allowed in the campground at any time. All extra vehicles must be parked in overflow parking at the boat ramp and require a daily $10 day-use fee.
An 8-person maximum per site is strictly enforced.
The number of tents per site is dependent on space, but generally, each site can accommodate one to two tents.
For water conservation, we do not allow the excessive use of water, kiddie pools, Slip & Slides, or similar water toys.
Each site has at least one parking stall available. Vehicles and equipment (for example, boat trailers) that do not fit in the paved driveway will be required to park in overflow parking at the boat ramp. You are not guaranteed parking space for two vehicles if your vehicles are larger than the total length of the parking stall.
For public safety, imitation guns, BB guns, air guns, pellet guns, and similar projectile firing devices cannot be used or displayed in the campground or anywhere at Hensley Lake at any time. Hensley Lake does not have a firing range or other designated target shooting area. All target shooting is prohibited.
Check in time starts at 3:00pm on the first day of a reservation and campers are required to vacate their site by 12:00pm on the last day of their reservation.
You may stay up to a maximum of 14 nights total at this campground within rolling 30 days.
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 more information, please call 559-831-7040 or email hensley-info@usace.army.mil
Tents and rigs
- Sites
- 57 · 13 tent-only, 2 group
- Hookups
- 21 electric, 17 water, 2 sewer
- Longest rig
- 90 ft
- Paved pads
- All
- Accessible sites
- 1
- Pets
- Allowed
- Campfires
- Allowed, barring fire bans
- Shade
- 52 of 56 sites
Facilities
- 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, River, Beach
- Biking
- Hiking
- Swimming
- Night sky · 1054th darkest of 1,201 in CA
- Bortle 4
62 of 94 site-nights open this Friday and Saturdayread 16:16 UTC
recreation.gov lists 53 of the 57 campsites the agency files here. The rest aren’t on its booking system, so a reservation won’t get you one.
OpenBooked
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.
We make nothing when you book. The link goes straight to the government.
Every line of the receipt · 21
What you actually pay
“All extra vehicles must be parked in overflow parking at the boat ramp and require a daily $10 day-use fee.” · the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’s own agency notice
Derived by CAMPANAC: the agency’s published rates for this season, $20–$60 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
recreation.gov availability, read 16:16 UTC · rules read Sep 9, 2026 · rates Oct 1, 2026 · How we know all this
The sites
57 sites · which ones have room · the site map
The sites, ranked
from 53 mapped sitesAll 57 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. 51 of the 57 sites listed carry one, and a site whose type has no published rate sits out of the price rather than being called free.
| A | 001 | standard nonelectric | 90 ft | 208 ft | 1,387 ft | $20–$40 | ||
| A | 002 | standard nonelectric | 60 ft | 47 ft | 1,264 ft | $20–$40 | ||
| A | 003 & 005 | standard nonelectric | 90 ft | 29 ft | 1,153 ft | $20–$40 | ||
| A | 004 | standard nonelectric | 40 ft | 90 ft | 1,079 ft | $20–$40 | ||
| A | 005 | standard nonelectric | 90 ft | 29 ft | 1,166 ft | $20–$40 | ||
| A | 006 | standard electric | 90 ft | 20/30/50 amp | 47 ft | 1,244 ft | $30–$60 | |
| A | 007 | standard electric | 55 ft | 20/30/50 amp | 72 ft | 1,314 ft | $30–$60 | |
| A | 008 | type not stated | 55 ft | 30 amp | 1,480 ft | |||
| A | 009 | type not stated | 62 ft | 30 amp | 1,419 ft | |||
| A | 010 | tent only nonelectric | 34 ft | 112 ft | 1,399 ft | $20 | ||
| A | 011 | tent only nonelectric | 72 ft | 1,247 ft | $20 | |||
| A | 012 | standard electric | 80 ft | 20/30/50 amp | 159 ft | 1,268 ft | $30–$60 | |
| B | 013 | standard electric | 45 ft | 50 amp | 66 ft | 913 ft | $30–$60 | |
| B | 014 | standard electric | 80 ft | 50 amp | 78 ft | 863 ft | $30–$60 | |
| B | 015 | standard electric | 80 ft | 50 amp | 66 ft | 847 ft | $30–$60 | |
| B | 016 | tent only nonelectric | 40 ft | 91 ft | 567 ft | $20 | ||
| B | 017 | tent only nonelectric | 40 ft | 90 ft | 494 ft | $20 | ||
| B | 018 | tent only nonelectric | 40 ft | 90 ft | 404 ft | $20 | ||
| B | 019 | standard nonelectric | 40 ft | 54 ft | 289 ft | $20–$40 | ||
| B | 020 | tent only nonelectric | 38 ft | 53 ft | 283 ft | $20 | ||
| B | 021 | tent only nonelectric | 38 ft | 53 ft | 312 ft | $20 | ||
| B | 022 & 023 | standard electric | 45 ft | 50 amp | 112 ft | 400 ft | $30–$60 | |
| B | 023 | type not stated | 34 ft | 50 amp | 440 ft | |||
| B | 024 | standard electric | 56 ft | 30 amp | 97 ft | 445 ft | $30–$60 | |
| B | 025 | standard nonelectric | 46 ft | 61 ft | 348 ft | $20–$40 | ||
| B | 026 | standard nonelectric | 90 ft | 61 ft | 379 ft | $20–$40 | ||
| B | 027 | standard nonelectric | 57 ft | 121 ft | 843 ft | $20–$40 | ||
| B | 028 | standard electric | 40 ft | 50 amp | 78 ft | 929 ft | $30–$60 | |
| B | 029 | standard nonelectric | 58 ft | 90 ft | 989 ft | $20–$40 | ||
| C | 030 | type not stated | 40 ft | 50 amp | 790 ft | |||
| C | 031 | standard electric | 45 ft | 50 amp | 90 ft | 634 ft | $30–$60 | |
| C | 032 | standard electric | 90 ft | 50 amp | 80 ft | 585 ft | $30–$60 | |
| C | 033 | standard electric | 45 ft | 50 amp | 80 ft | 545 ft | $30–$60 | |
| C | 034 | tent only nonelectric | 34 ft | 114 ft | 414 ft | $20 | ||
| C | 035 | tent only nonelectric | 34 ft | 83 ft | 324 ft | $20 | ||
| C | 036A | tent only nonelectric | 40 ft | 57 ft | 256 ft | $20 | ||
| C | 036B | tent only nonelectric | 40 ft | 57 ft | 266 ft | $20 | ||
| C | 036C | tent only nonelectric | 40 ft | 78 ft | 264 ft | $20 | ||
| C | 036D | tent only nonelectric | 40 ft | 78 ft | 332 ft | $20 | ||
| C | 037 | standard electric | 85 ft | 50 amp | 135 ft | 473 ft | $30–$60 | |
| C | 038 & 039 | standard electric | 50 ft | 20/30/50 amp | 46 ft | 724 ft | $30–$60 | |
| C | 039 | standard nonelectric | 21 ft | 46 ft | 685 ft | $20–$40 | ||
| C | 040 | standard nonelectric | 90 ft | 54 ft | 401 ft | $20–$40 | ||
| C | 041 | standard nonelectric | 50 ft | 54 ft | 398 ft | $20–$40 | ||
| C | 042 | standard nonelectric | 42 ft | 62 ft | 459 ft | $20–$40 | ||
| C | 043 | standard nonelectric | 66 ft | 57 ft | 545 ft | $20–$40 | ||
| C | 044 | standard nonelectric | 60 ft | 57 ft | 594 ft | $20–$40 | ||
| C | 045 & 046 | standard electric | 90 ft | 50 amp | 120 ft | 543 ft | $30–$60 | |
| C | 046 | standard electric | 90 ft | 50 amp | 80 ft | 652 ft | $30–$60 | |
| C | 047 | standard nonelectric | 40 ft | 60 ft | 593 ft | $20–$40 | ||
| C | 048 | standard nonelectric | 55 ft | 114 ft | 675 ft | $20–$40 | ||
| C | 049 | standard electric | 40 ft | 20/30/50 amp | yes | 80 ft | 714 ft | $30–$60 |
| C | 050 | standard nonelectric | 40 ft | 81 ft | 786 ft | $20–$40 | ||
| C | 051 | standard electric | 35 ft | 50 amp | 162 ft | 942 ft | $30–$60 | |
| C | 052 | standard electric | 90 ft | 50 amp | 143 ft | 867 ft | $30–$60 | |
| GROUP SITES | A | group standard electric | 20 amp | 159 ft | 1,208 ft | |||
| GROUP SITES | B | group standard area electric | 30 ft | 20 amp | 279 ft | 1,486 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 57 listed
Getting there
the map and the coordinate · the agency’s directions · the phone number
Where it is
Buck Ridge1.2 miHidden View Campground1.3 mi
Wildcat Equestrian Area6.8 mi
Wildcat Recreation Area Campground6.9 miWildcat Campground7.0 miFrom south of Fresno: Take SR 99 to SR 41 north and go 21 miles to SR 145. Turn left on 145 and go 8.4 miles to Road 33. Turn right on Road 33, and go one mile to Road 400. Take a right onto 400 and go 7.1 miles to Road 603. Turn left and go 1 mile to Road 407. Take a right on 407 and drive 1.7 miles to the campground.
From south of Madera: Take SR 99 north to exit 153B. Bear right onto Madera Ave. and go .3 miles to Gateway. Turn left and drive .2 miles to the traffic light at Yosemite Ave. (SR 145). Turn right and go 7.2 miles to Road 33. Turn left on Road 33, and go 1 mile to Road 400. Take a right onto 400 and go 7.1 miles to Road 603. Turn left and go 1 mile to Road 407. Take a right on 407 and drive 1.7 miles to the campground.
From north of Madera: Take State Route 99 south to exit 153B. Exit onto Olive Ave. Turn left onto Madera Ave. and go .3 miles to Gateway. Turn left and drive .2 miles to the traffic light at Yosemite Ave. (SR 145). Turn right and go 7.2 miles to Road 33. Turn left on Road 33, and go one mile to Road 400. Take a right onto 400 and go 7.1 miles to Road 603. Turn left and go 1 mile to Road 407. Take a right on 407 and drive 1.7 miles to the campground.
The weather
the next four days · the thirty-year normal
Next four days, and the thirty-year normal
Forecast
NWS forecast for Yosemite Lakes, CA
Typical weather
Typical October night 50°F, day 80°F.
Coldest month of the year: typical December night 37°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
Hidden View is in California’s 5th congressional district. Its representative, Tom McClintock (R), votes on the laws that decide what happens to this land. Public-lands grade so far: F. See every public-lands vote →