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U.S. Forest Service · Shoshone National Forest · WY

Island Lake Campground

First come, first servedNo reservation, and none to be had: the sites go to whoever pulls in first.

This is how it should work.

Get directions
Right now
Listed not openA database flag with no reason and no date
Drawn from the record · 9,550 ft · 44% tree cover · water within reach · Bortle 2 sky
9,550 ftElevation
618 ftWater · an unnamed pond
21 miSW of Red Lodge, MT
44%Tree cover
Bortle 2Night sky · 49th darkest of 248 in WY

The place

the agency’s own description · what’s there

In the agency’s own words

This beautiful high mountain lake campground has 21 newly remodeled sites. There is always plenty to do at this campground; hiking, fishing, wildlife viewing, and beautiful wildflowers galore. 16-day stay limit Water: Available This site is not accessible to persons with mobility impairments. No cell service Notes: Maximum spur 32 feet. Boat ramp closed until winter ice clears. Fish Your National Forests: This site can be accessed by Passenger Car; Fish available include: Trout; Types of fishing available include: Wade, Shore, Motorized boat, Float tube, Fly, Spin, Bait, Ice; Boat Launch available

Source: Recreation.gov data (RIDB), full extract · Aug 23, 2026

Facilities

Boat ramp
Yes
Cell signal
Little or none
Source: Stated in the agency description · Aug 23, 2026

Around the campground

On the water
Lake
Fishing
Hiking
Wildlife viewing
Cell signal · Cell signal · Forest Service says
None
Source: Recreation.gov activity records · Aug 23, 2026
Cell signal: the Forest Service’s own campground description, read as text by CAMPANAC. None of this is a measurement. It’s what the land manager published about the place, and phones, carriers and weather all disagree with each other; treat it as a warning, not a promise. · Sep 8, 2026
Official page: Island Lake Campground →

Nothing to book, just show up

One of 1,623 federal campgrounds where the site still goes to whoever pulls in first. Get there before noon on a summer weekend.

recreation.gov publishes no availability for a campground you can’t reserve, so there’s no thirty-night reading to draw here. The season bar above is what the agency does publish.

BookingNo reservationsNothing to book, and no release date to wait forthe agency’s record
Runs itU.S. Forest Servicethe agency’s record
Directions
Every line of the receipt · 3

What you actually pay

The sign priceU.S. Forest Service
The U.S. Forest Service publishes no per-night rate for this campground that we can read, so there’s no sign price to print. That’s a gap in the record, not a free campground.
The booking feerecreation.gov
Nothing. This campground takes no bookings, so there’s no reservation fee to pay.
What a stay costs
The agency publishes no nightly rate for this campground, so there’s no total to show.
How we know this receipt · 4
Booking fee, change fee, cancellation fee, no-show: Rules and Reservation Policies, Recreation.gov, the published fee schedule, curated by hand into lib/reservation-fee-schedule.json (9 rows, each carrying its own verbatim sentence). The publisher states these policies were last updated September 2019. · Sep 9, 2026
The two totals: Derived by CAMPANAC by adding the agency’s own published nightly rate to recreation.gov’s own published reservation fee. Both components are cited above; the addition is ours and is shown only where every component is known. · Sep 9, 2026
Who keeps the booking fee: Recreation.gov facility policy text, Dead Swede Campground (facility 234221) · Not on the national policy page. This is agency policy text recreation.gov publishes on individual campground pages; this site holds it verbatim on 45 active campgrounds (campground_rules.cancellation_description, scripts/load-facility-rules.mjs). · Sep 9, 2026
The contract: Reservation Gods: Who Stole Our Campsites and Sold Them Back to Us, More Than Just Parks, April 2025 · Apr 1, 2025
Source: Recreation.gov data (RIDB), full extract · Aug 23, 2026

rules read Sep 7, 2026 · record Aug 23, 2026 · How we know all this

Seen something wrong here? Tell us.

Getting there

the map and the coordinate
Coordinate44.94074, -109.53995
The agency’s pageOfficial page ↗

Where it is

Source: Recreation.gov data (RIDB), full extract · Aug 23, 2026

The weather

the next four days

Next four days, and the thirty-year normal

Forecast

Today49°Sunny
Tonight31°Mostly Clear
Saturday51°Sunny
Saturday Night31°Partly Cloudy1% rain

NWS forecast for Cooke City, MT

Source: National Weather Service, RIW forecast office · Oct 16, 2026

The land, and who answers for it

what threatens it · who answers for it

Roadless country, and what’s coming for it

Roadless
North Boundary182 acres · 5 mi · inventoried roadless area
Roadless
South Beartooth Highway105,570 acres · 6 mi · inventoried roadless area
Roadless
Beartooth Proposed Wilderness16,837 acres · 6 mi · inventoried roadless area

You’re camping on ground somebody wants. We track the threats and the comment deadlines.

Source: USFS Inventoried Roadless Areas via MTJP Roadless Map · Jul 29, 2026

Who answers for this land

Harriet Hageman, official portrait

Island Lake Campground is in Wyoming’s at-large congressional district. Its representative, Harriet Hageman (R), votes on the laws that decide what happens to this land. Public-lands grade so far: F. See every public-lands vote →

Seen something wrong here? Tell us.

Source: U.S. Census district boundaries and the MTJP Congressional Public Lands Score

How we know

every fact on this page, and where it came from
Right now: U.S. Forest Service’s own recreation database flags it not open and publishes no reason and no date. That’s a flag, not a notice.
Listed not open: USFS EDW Recreation Opportunities, openstatus field: a not-open flag in a database, with no reason and no date published; read there since Sep 9, 2026. A flag, not a notice, so this page doesn’t call it a closure. · Oct 16, 2026
Elevation: USGS 3DEP elevation point query at this campground’s coordinate · Sep 7, 2026
Night sky: VIIRS Day/Night Band annual cloud-free composite, VNL V2 2024 (Earth Observation Group, Colorado School of Mines), read at the published coordinate: 0.021 mcd/m² of artificial all-sky glow, ranked against the 248 rated federal campgrounds in Wyoming · Sep 8, 2026
Sky-glow model: Duriscoe, Anderson, Luginbuhl and Baugh (2018), a simplified model of all-sky artificial sky glow derived from VIIRS Day/Night band data, the National Park Service sky-glow model
Cell signal: the Forest Service’s own campground description, read as text by CAMPANAC. None of this is a measurement. It’s what the land manager published about the place, and phones, carriers and weather all disagree with each other; treat it as a warning, not a promise. · Sep 8, 2026

“…accessible to persons with mobility impairments. No cell service Notes: Maximum spur 32 feet. Boat ramp closed until winter…”

Nearest place of any size: Cooke City, MT, 16.1 mi ESE (a census designated place). Straight line.
Nearest town: U.S. Census Bureau TIGER/Line 2024 places, measured by CAMPANAC to the town boundary; population is the ACS 2020-2024 5-year estimate · Sep 9, 2026