Lake Springs
- Right now
- Closedrecreation.gov lists every site closed this weekend, read 14:48 UTC
The place
the agency’s own description · what’s there · 8 notices
In the agency’s own words
Lake Springs Recreation Area is one of the most popular parks on J. Strom Thurmond Lake. The park is located on Georgia State Highway 221 within twenty minutes of Augusta, Georgia. The 70,000 acre lake and its 1,000+ miles of shoreline provide excellent boating, water skiing, swimming, fishing, hiking and picnicking. A $5 per vehicle day use fee is required to enter the park. All Federal Passes are accepted. Payment can be made on site, credit card only, no cash accepted. The boat ramp and fishing pier are open year-round. All swim beaches, picnic tables, and group shelters close after Labor Day, September 6, and reopen April 28 EXCEPT the Deer Run beach, tables, and group shelter are open year-round. 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 endless boating, water skiing, jet skiing, canoeing and swimming opportunities. Hikers have access to many miles of trails in the immediate area. Within the Lake Springs Recreation Area is the 1.8-mile Lake Springs Loop. Outside the park stretches the 27-mile Bartram Trail, which meanders along the scenic shoreline and through Wildwood Park. Shorter sections can be hiked from several intersecting trailheads.
Facilities
Lake Springs Recreation Area is a wooded day-use area with four group picnic shelters. Water and electrical hookups are provided at each shelter. Other amenities include flush and vault toilets, drinking water, a boat ramp, dock, fish cleaning station, playground and lookout tower.
Natural Features
Hot, humid summers and mild, pleasant winters characterize this heavily wooded area on the shore of Thurmond Lake. A mixed pine and hardwood forest covers the site, providing summer shade and fall color. Elevation is 345' above sea level. Wildlife is abundant around the lake. Visitors regularly see southern bald eagles, migratory waterfowl, wild turkeys and whitetail deer.
Nearby Attractions
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
Park hours are 8 a.m. - 8:30 p.m.
All users must pay the $7 entry fee by the credit card machine prior to the gatehouse. Pass must be displayed with the time and date visable during your visit. Acceptable passes are the USACE Annual Pass and the America the Beautiful – the National Parks and Federal Recreational Lands Passes.
Pets permitted on leash
Everything else this campground posts · 5
Alcoholic beverages are prohibited
Glass and pets are prohibited on designated swimming beaches
Fires are prohibited
Nets, volleyballs and horseshoes are not provided
For shelter reservations: Please bring your confirmation letter to the park; it is required for check-in Shelter must be occupied by 2pm Users are not exempt from entrance fee The beach area and other park amenities are available for the reserving group as well as to the general public
Facilities
- Toilets
- Vault Toilets
- “…Other amenities include flush and vault toilets, drinking water, a boat ramp, dock, fish cleaning…”
- Drinking water
- Yes
- “…include flush and vault toilets, drinking water, a boat ramp, dock, fish cleaning station,…”
- Boat ramp
- Yes
- Playground
- Yes
- Stay limit
- 14 nights
- recreation.gov facility rule maxStay
Around the campground
- On the water
- Lake, Beach
- Accessible Swimming
- Biking
- Boating
- Fishing
- Hiking
- Lookout Tower
- Picnicking
- Swimming
Nothing to book until it reopensread 14:48 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 Lake Springs 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 · 1
The agency’s own word that these are open, not our reading of a season.
- Lick Fork Lake Recreation AreaSumter National Forest · 12 mi
recreation.gov availability, read 14:48 UTC · rules read Sep 9, 2026 · rates Oct 1, 2026 · How we know all this
The sites
4 records · which ones have room · the site map
The sites, ranked
from 4 mapped sitesAll 4 records
| PINE | PINE POINT | day use | yes | 899 ft | 82 ft | ||
| SPRI | DEER RUN | day use | 15 amp | yes | 963 ft | 129 ft | $75–$125 |
| SPRI | MALLARD POINT | day use | 15 amp | yes | 899 ft | 176 ft | $75–$125 |
| SQRL | SQUIRREL NEST | day use | 15 amp | yes | 963 ft | 73 ft | $75–$125 |
The agency files 4 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
Below Dam South Carolina1.3 mi
West Dam1.7 mi
Petersburg1.8 mi
Ridge Road1.9 mi
Clarks Hill2.4 mi
Modoc3.7 miFrom Augusta, GA, travel 22 miles west on GA-104, then 4 miles north on US HWY 221.
The weather
the next four days · the thirty-year normal
Next four days, and the thirty-year normal
Forecast
NWS forecast for Modoc, SC
Typical weather
Typical October night 58°F, day 78°F.
Coldest month of the year: typical January night 40°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
Lake Springs is in Georgia’s 12th congressional district. Its representative, Rick Allen (R), votes on the laws that decide what happens to this land. Public-lands grade so far: F. See every public-lands vote →