Hop Brook Lake Recreation Area
This place has sites and nobody may sleep in them.Ask for camping here →
- Right now
- Nobody has saidNo season, no closure, no bookings to read
The place
the agency’s own description · what’s there · 10 notices
In the agency’s own words
Hop Brook Lake Recreation Area is located within the towns of Middlebury, Naugatuck and Waterbury, Connecticut. Its 536 acres provide excellent recreation opportunities and a chance to escape from the growing suburbia surrounding the park. Visitors can enjoy picnicking, hiking, mountain biking, canoeing/kayaking, swimming and fishing. Keep reading
Recreation
Exploring Hop Brook Lake by canoe, kayak or rowboat is a favorite activity of visitors. The park's beach and designated swimming area are also a great place to relax in the warm summer sun. Fishing is welcome at the lake and its feeder streams, which are periodically stocked by the CT. DEEP with brown, brook, and rainbow trout. Largemouth bass, perch and panfish are also found in the lake. Hikers, walkers, mountain bikers, cross country skiers and snowshoers will find over seven miles of trails that wind throughout the woods and meadows at Hop Brook Lake.
Facilities
This day-use park offers (4) four picnic shelters with electrical outlets, picnic tables, and charcoal grills. An on-site ball field can also be reserved for various sporting events and activities. Regular picnic sites are also spread throughout the park and available on a first come, first served basis. User Fee's are no longer charged to enter the park. Other amenities include restroom facilities with flush toilets/sinks/water fountains, beach/swimming area, hiking/mt. biking trails, ball field, volleyball courts, and horseshoe pits.
Natural Features
The forest surrounding Hop Brook Lake is made up of a wide variety of trees including maple, oak, hickory, ash, birch, white pine and hemlock. Wildlife is abundant in the area. Bird watchers have the opportunity to see hawks, owls, osprey, turkeys, waterfowl, numerous songbirds and the occasional bald eagle. White-tailed deer, black bears, coyotes, foxes, bobcats, raccoons, possums, beaver, squirrels and many other animals make Hop Brook Lake their home.
What the agency tells you
This is a day-use area; no overnight camping allowed.
Vehicles are prohibited from driving through interior gates or on access roads (including at all shelters). This includes catered events.
ATVs, Dirt Bikes and OHVs are prohibited.
Everything else this campground posts · 7
Pets are not allowed on beach and must be kept on a leash at all times.
Motor boats (gas powered) are prohibited. Electric trolling motors are allowed.
Generators are prohibited.
America the Beautiful pass holders receive half off the day-use fee.
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.
User Fee's are no longer charged to enter the park.
Unmanned Aircraft Systems are prohibited.
Facilities
- Toilets
- Flush Toilets
- FLUSH TOILETS (SEASONAL) on 5 of 5 campsite records
- Drinking water
- Yes
- “…facilities with flush toilets/sinks/water fountains, beach/swimming area, hiking/mt. biking trails,…”
- Stay limit
- 14 nights
- recreation.gov facility rule maxStay
Around the campground
- On the water
- Lake, Creek, Beach, Meadow
- Biking
- Boating
- Canoeing
- Cross Country Skiing
- Fishing
- Hiking
- Ranger programs
- Kayaking
- Mountain biking
- Non-Motorized Boating
- Picnicking
- Ranger Station
- Recreation Programs
- Snowshoeing
- Cell signal · Cell signal · Army Corps says
- Yes
- Fall color · reported 2 days ago, 32 km away
- Patchy color
Nothing here to sleep in
The agency files 5 records here and marks every one of them day use, not overnight. On its own record there’s nothing here to spend the night in.
No availability snapshot inside the last 36 hours, so this page draws nothing rather than ageing a reading into fiction.
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.
Tell me when the season opens
Watch for the season to open
One email when the season goes on sale, plus More Than Just Parks dispatches. Unsubscribe any time.
We check once an hour, at 40 minutes past, and write the first time the agency has that season on sale.
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 · 13
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 · 5
rules read Sep 9, 2026 · rates Oct 1, 2026 · How we know all this
The sites
5 records · which ones have room · the site map
The sites, ranked
from 4 mapped sitesAll 5 records
| Ball Field | 005 | day use | 294 ftHop Brook Lake | $75 | |
| Brookside Shelter | 001 | day use | 252 ft | 214 ftHop Brook | $100–$135 |
| Meadows Shelter | 002 | day use | 252 ft | 251 ftHop Brook | $100–$135 |
| Pines Shelter | 003 | day use | 476 ft | 413 ftHop Brook Lake | $100–$135 |
| Westlawn Shelter | 004 | day use | 1266 ft | 92 ftHop Brook Lake | $100–$135 |
The agency files 5 more records here that aren’t sites for the night. It files them as day use. They’re in the table above, marked for what they are, and none of them is 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
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The Cottage at Sailors HavenFire Island National Seashore · 59 miFrom Bridgeport, take Route 8 N 23.5 miles to Exit 26/CT-63 S in Naugatuck. Head southeast on Main Street and turn onto CT-63 N. Travel approx. 3 miles. The park entrance is on the right side of the road at the intersection of CT-63 and CT-188.
From Hartford, take I-84 W 31 miles to the CT-64 exit, Exit 17 (Watertown/Middlebury, Rte. 63). Go straight until you come to the intersection of CT-64 and CT-63. Turn left on CT-63. Travel approx. 1.5 miles. The park entrance is on the left side of the road at the intersection of CT-63 and CT-188.
From Danbury, take I-84 E to the CT-63 exit, Exit 17 (Naugatuck/Watertown, Rte. 63). Take a right off the exit ramp. Travel approx. 1.5 miles. The park entrance is on the left side of the road at the intersection of CT-63 and CT-188.
The weather
the next four days · the thirty-year normal
Next four days, and the thirty-year normal
Forecast
NWS forecast for Naugatuck, CT
Typical weather
Typical October night 43°F, day 64°F.
Coldest month of the year: typical January 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
who answers for it · a letter you can send
Who answers for this land
Hop Brook Lake Recreation Area is in Connecticut’s 3rd congressional district. Its representative, Rosa DeLauro (D), votes on the laws that decide what happens to this land. Public-lands grade so far: A+. See every public-lands vote →
Who can change it · 3
The agency’s own record files sites here and marks every one of them day use. The draft asks whether any could open to overnight camping, and if not, why.
- The member who votes the moneyRosa L. DeLauroU.S. Representative · Connecticut’s 3rd district
- Your senator, on the same appropriationChristopher MurphyU.S. Senator · Connecticut
- Your senator, on the same appropriationRichard BlumenthalU.S. Senator · Connecticut
Read the draft, or change the wording
Asks them to put the same question to the agency in writing.
Subject Hop Brook Lake Recreation Area has sites, and nobody may sleep in them
Dear Rosa L. DeLauro, I’m a constituent in Connecticut’s 3rd district. Hop Brook Lake Recreation Area, Connecticut carries 5 records on the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’s own file, every one of them marked day use rather than overnight. I’m asking you to put one question to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in writing: would they consider opening any of these sites to overnight camping, and if not, why not? Road trips and camping on public land are part of how this country knows itself. It’s where a lot of people meet the place they live in for the first time, and it has never been something you had to be well off, or well organised six months in advance, to do. Sent about Hop Brook Lake Recreation Area (Connecticut) via campanac.com
Asks them to put the same question to the agency in writing.
Subject Hop Brook Lake Recreation Area has sites, and nobody may sleep in them
Dear Christopher Murphy, I’m a constituent in Connecticut. Hop Brook Lake Recreation Area, Connecticut carries 5 records on the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’s own file, every one of them marked day use rather than overnight. I’m asking you to put one question to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in writing: would they consider opening any of these sites to overnight camping, and if not, why not? Road trips and camping on public land are part of how this country knows itself. It’s where a lot of people meet the place they live in for the first time, and it has never been something you had to be well off, or well organised six months in advance, to do. Sent about Hop Brook Lake Recreation Area (Connecticut) via campanac.com
Asks them to put the same question to the agency in writing.
Subject Hop Brook Lake Recreation Area has sites, and nobody may sleep in them
Dear Richard Blumenthal, I’m a constituent in Connecticut. Hop Brook Lake Recreation Area, Connecticut carries 5 records on the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’s own file, every one of them marked day use rather than overnight. I’m asking you to put one question to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in writing: would they consider opening any of these sites to overnight camping, and if not, why not? Road trips and camping on public land are part of how this country knows itself. It’s where a lot of people meet the place they live in for the first time, and it has never been something you had to be well off, or well organised six months in advance, to do. Sent about Hop Brook Lake Recreation Area (Connecticut) via campanac.com
How we know this · 4
How we know
every fact on this page, and where it came from
“the agency's own site records list "CELL PHONE SERVICE" on 5 of 5 campsites here”