Jacob Lake Recreation Area
- Right now
- Nobody has saidNo season, no closure, no bookings to read
- A night
- $30From, per site
- Sites
- 53All of them booked ahead
The place
the agency’s own description · what’s there · 10 notices
In the agency’s own words
Jacob Lake Recreation Area is conveniently located in Jacob Lake, Arizona, the gateway to the Grand Canyon's North Rim. The campground is nestled among the towering Ponderosa Pine trees of the North Kaibab National Forest, where ample opportunities to enjoy nature abound, from hiking and mountain biking to birding. Summer temperatures are pleasant during the day and nights are cool, while several feet of snow cover the landscape in winter. The campground is open on a seasonal basis, though the national forest remains open year 'round. Keep reading
Recreation
Grand Canyon National Park is a popular destination for campers staying at Jacob Lake Recreation Area. But from the campground itself, visitors can walk a pleasant one-mile loop trail, or take a 10 minute drive to the Kaibab Plateau Trail a section of the Arizona Trail, which runs north-to-south across the entire length of the state. The national forest also has a variety of mountain biking trails ranging from beginner to advanced levels. There is no fishing at Jacob Lake. Reservations for horseback riding and chuck wagon rides, as well as bike rentals, are available at Jacob Lake Inn across the street.
Facilities
The group campground is adjacent to Jacob Lake Campground and features two group sites that can accommodate up to 100 people each. While perfect for weddings, family reunions and other large group events, this campground is not intended for traditional camping with small groups of people. The facility offers ramadas, grills, tables, toilets and water. Jacob Lake Recreation Area is very accessible. It is located on 89A, a paved U.S. highway, yet set far enough back from the road to provide privacy. The roads within the campground are gravel. The facility is across the street from Jacob Lake Inn, which has a restaurant, gas station, gift shop and limited groceries, and the Kaibab Plateau Visitor Center. The nearest full facilities are 30 to 40 miles away in Fredonia, Arizona and Kanab, Utah.
Natural Features
Jacob Lake is at an elevation of 7,920 feet. The Kaibab Plateau is an area uplifted by geologic processes, making it higher in elevation than the surrounding deserts (the closest town of Fredonia, Arizona is 28 miles away and nearly 4,700 feet). Many species of wildlife call the Kaibab home, including the tassel-eared Kaibab squirrel, found nowhere else in the world, and numerous species of birds. The nearby lake only fills up with water occasionally, but marsh areas along the edges of the lake are great bird habitats. Contact Info For facility specific information, please call (928) 537-8888.
Nearby Attractions
The campground is 44 miles north of Grand Canyon National Park's rustic and less populated North Rim - home to abundant wildlife, hiking trails, spruce-fir and Ponderosa pine forests and unparalleled views of one of the Seven Natural Wonders of the World. Enjoy a visit to the North Rim from mid-May through mid-October; the road is closed during winter. Grand Canyon National Park>
What the agency tells you
Overnight campsites have a check-in time of after 2pm and a check-out time of 1pm. The Picnic Day Use area is rented on a first come, first serve basis and has a check-in time of 8 a.m. and a check-out time of 8 p.m.
Potable (drinking) water is limited. Filling RV water tanks is not permitted.
Standard Single Family sites: Recreation Use Fee allows ONE camping unit ONLY. Group sites - refer to Specific Site # for capacity limits.
Everything else this campground posts · 7
Extra vehicles: Cannot be paid for in advance - upon arrival coordinate with the host for payment and where to park.
FIRST COME FIRST SERVE sites must be booked in person. DO NOT call to determine availability, as they are only available on-site.
Late Arrivals: campers are not considered a "no-show" until 24 hours after arrival date check in time. Our policy is that your site will not be released before that.
No hookups available.
This is a high elevation facility; use caution when traveling from lower elevations.
Bears frequent the area; please obey all food storage rules and regulations. Check with your host for details.
Opening and closing dates are weather permitting, please call 928-537-8888 for more information.
Tents and rigs
- Sites
- 53 · 2 group
- Hookups
- None
- Longest rig
- 100 ft
- Accessible sites
- None listed
- Pets
- Allowed
- Campfires
- Allowed, barring fire bans
- Shade
- Every site
Facilities
- Camp host
- On site
- recreation.gov lists “Host”
Around the campground
- On the water
- Lake
- Biking
- Hiking
- Historic site
- Horseback riding
- Hunting
- Picnicking
- Night sky · 8th darkest of 262 in AZ
- Bortle 2
Nothing on the booking system for the next 30 nightsread 15:21 UTC
Every site here is reservable, and the record lists none held back for anyone who drives up.
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.
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
Derived by CAMPANAC: the agency’s published rate for this season, $30 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 · 5
recreation.gov availability, read 15:21 UTC · rules read Sep 9, 2026 · rates Oct 1, 2026 · How we know all this
The sites
54 records · which ones have room · the site map
The sites, ranked
from 53 mapped sitesAll 54 records
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 54 sites listed carry one, and a site whose type has no published rate sits out of the price rather than being called free.
Measured shade is NLCD Tree Canopy Cover 2024 (USDA Forest Service / MRLC) read at the site’s own coordinate, 27% canopy or more, and only for the sites the agency gave no Shade value. It never changes the agency’s own shaded count beside it.
| LOPA | 001 | standard nonelectric | 40 ft | 81 ft | 1,424 ft | $30 |
| LOPA | 002 | standard nonelectric | 45 ft | 81 ft | 1,500 ft | $30 |
| LOPA | 003 | standard nonelectric | 36 ft | 60 ft | 1,495 ft | $30 |
| LOPA | 004 | standard nonelectric | 40 ft | 60 ft | 1,548 ft | $30 |
| LOPA | 005 | standard nonelectric | 42 ft | 68 ft | 1,582 ft | $30 |
| LOPA | 006 | standard nonelectric | 40 ft | 68 ft | 1,608 ft | $30 |
| LOPA | 007 | standard nonelectric | 35 ft | 77 ft | 1,678 ft | $30 |
| LOPA | 008 | standard nonelectric | 40 ft | 76 ft | 1,658 ft | $30 |
| LOPA | 009 | standard nonelectric | 30 ft | 60 ft | 1,746 ft | $30 |
| LOPA | 010 | standard nonelectric | 40 ft | 60 ft | 1,765 ft | $30 |
| LOPA | 011 | standard nonelectric | 40 ft | 61 ft | 1,822 ft | $30 |
| LOPA | 012 | standard nonelectric | 42 ft | 50 ft | 1,897 ft | $30 |
| LOPA | 013 | standard nonelectric | 40 ft | 50 ft | 1,907 ft | $30 |
| LOPA | 014 | standard nonelectric | 36 ft | 64 ft | 1,952 ft | $30 |
| LOPA | 015 | standard nonelectric | 40 ft | 49 ft | 1,895 ft | $30 |
| LOPA | 016 | standard nonelectric | 36 ft | 49 ft | 1,885 ft | $30 |
| LOPA | 017 | standard nonelectric | 40 ft | 58 ft | 1,828 ft | $30 |
| LOPA | 018 | standard nonelectric | 40 ft | 53 ft | 1,785 ft | $30 |
| LOPA | 019 | standard nonelectric | 40 ft | 53 ft | 1,753 ft | $30 |
| LOPA | 020 | standard nonelectric | 40 ft | 73 ft | 1,719 ft | $30 |
| LOPA | 021 | standard nonelectric | 38 ft | 74 ft | 1,673 ft | $30 |
| LOPA | 022 | standard nonelectric | 40 ft | 55 ft | 1,640 ft | $30 |
| LOPA | 023 | standard nonelectric | 23 ft | 55 ft | 1,664 ft | $30 |
| LOPA | 024 | standard nonelectric | 24 ft | 73 ft | 1,579 ft | $30 |
| LOPA | 025 | standard nonelectric | 42 ft | 90 ft | 1,506 ft | $30 |
| LOPA | 026 | standard nonelectric | 30 ft | 74 ft | 1,426 ft | $30 |
| LOPA | 027 | standard nonelectric | 38 ft | 74 ft | 1,441 ft | $30 |
| LOPA | 028 | standard nonelectric | 38 ft | 77 ft | 1,370 ft | $30 |
| LOPA | 029 | standard nonelectric | 38 ft | 62 ft | 1,344 ft | $30 |
| LOPA | 030 | standard nonelectric | 30 ft | 62 ft | 1,347 ft | $30 |
| LOPA | 031 | standard nonelectric | 38 ft | 50 ft | 1,401 ft | $30 |
| LOPA | 032 | standard nonelectric | 30 ft | 50 ft | 1,351 ft | $30 |
| LOPA | 033 | standard nonelectric | 38 ft | 64 ft | 1,369 ft | $30 |
| LOPA | 034 | standard nonelectric | 38 ft | 64 ft | 1,305 ft | $30 |
| LOPA | 035 | standard nonelectric | 30 ft | 67 ft | 1,316 ft | $30 |
| LOPA | 036 | standard nonelectric | 34 ft | 51 ft | 1,255 ft | $30 |
| LOPA | 037 | standard nonelectric | 30 ft | 51 ft | 1,238 ft | $30 |
| LOPA | 038 | standard nonelectric | 30 ft | 82 ft | 1,131 ft | $30 |
| LOPA | 039 | standard nonelectric | 30 ft | 82 ft | 1,116 ft | $30 |
| LOPA | 040 | standard nonelectric | 40 ft | 86 ft | 1,210 ft | $30 |
| LOPA | 041 | standard nonelectric | 38 ft | 69 ft | 1,170 ft | $30 |
| LOPA | 042 | standard nonelectric | 36 ft | 68 ft | 1,240 ft | $30 |
| LOPA | 043 | standard nonelectric | 36 ft | 68 ft | 1,224 ft | $30 |
| LOPA | 044 | standard nonelectric | 30 ft | 71 ft | 1,171 ft | $30 |
| LOPA | 045 | standard nonelectric | 42 ft | 71 ft | 1,236 ft | $30 |
| LOPA | 046 | standard nonelectric | 30 ft | 60 ft | 1,203 ft | $30 |
| LOPA | 047 | standard nonelectric | 40 ft | 64 ft | 1,253 ft | $30 |
| LOPA | 048 | standard nonelectric | 30 ft | 60 ft | 1,225 ft | $30 |
| LOPA | 049 | standard nonelectric | 42 ft | 75 ft | 1,330 ft | $30 |
| LOPA | 050 | standard nonelectric | 38 ft | 75 ft | 1,375 ft | $30 |
| LOPA | 051 | standard nonelectric | 38 ft | 73 ft | 1,507 ft | $30 |
| LOPA | GSA | group standard nonelectric | 60 ft | 206 ft | 2,757 ft | |
| LOPB | GSB | group standard nonelectric | 100 ft | 206 ft | 2,663 ft | |
| LOPC | Picnic Area | day use | 25 ft | 2,730 ft | $8 |
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.
25 of 54 listed
Getting there
the map and the coordinate · the agency’s directions · the phone number
Where it is
Big Springs Cabin SiteGrand Canyon Preserve National Game Refuge · 10 mi
Jumpup CabinGrand Canyon Preserve National Game Refuge · 20 mi
DemotteGrand Canyon Preserve National Game Refuge · 20 mi
Stateline CampgroundKanab Field Office · 23 mi
White House CampgroundKanab Field Office · 32 miThe facility is 30 miles southeast of Fredonia, Arizona on U.S. Route 89A. It is 0.1 miles from the intersection of U.S. Route 89A and State Route 67.
The weather
the next four days · the thirty-year normal
Next four days, and the thirty-year normal
Forecast
NWS forecast for Fredonia, AZ
Typical weather
Typical October night 33°F, day 56°F.
Coldest month of the year: typical December night 17°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
what threatens it · who answers for it
Roadless country, and what’s coming for it
You’re camping on ground somebody wants. We track the threats and the comment deadlines.
Who answers for this land
Jacob Lake Recreation Area is in Arizona’s 2nd congressional district. Its representative, Eli Crane (R), votes on the laws that decide what happens to this land. Public-lands grade so far: F. See every public-lands vote →