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U.S. Forest Service · Grand Mesa National Forest · CO

Little Bear Campground - Grand Valley RD

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 directionsWhat it costs, and the rules
Right now
OpenInside the published season, our reading; a database flag says not open
A night
$22From, per site
Season
June 14Opens June 14. No closing date published.
Drawn from the record · 10,250 ft · 28% tree cover · Island Lake within reach · Bortle 2 sky
10,250 ftElevation
243 ftWater · Island Lake
9.2 miNW of Cedaredge, CO
28%Tree cover
Bortle 2Night sky · 283rd darkest of 522 in CO
Opens June 14. No closing date published.Today

The place

the agency’s own description · what’s there

In the agency’s own words

This campground is at 10,200-foot elevation; and has 36 campsites, 2 of which are handicapped-accessible. Maximum spur length is 49 ft. The campground is composed of two loops along the shore of Island Lake with some sites along the shore of the lake. It is heavily wooded with spruce trees. There is a wheelchair friendly area with a fish cleaning station adjacent to the Island Lake Boat Ramp. The campground is convenient to several of the Mesa's 300 lakes, the visitor center and Crag Crest Trailhead. Bring plenty of mosquito repellent.

Source: USFS Enterprise Data Warehouse · Aug 24, 2026

Facilities

Boat ramp
Yes
Source: Stated in the agency description

Around the campground

On the water
Lake
Fall color · reported 11 days ago, 6.6 km away
Peak color
Source: Stated in the agency description
Fall color: More Than Just Parks foliage tracker, joined to this campground by distance (6.6 km) · Oct 5, 2026

Nothing to book, just show up

One of 1,623 federal campgrounds where the site still goes to whoever pulls in first, and a night costs $22 with nothing added. 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 record
A night$22Per site, fromthe agency’s fee record
A weekend$44DerivedFriday and Saturday, everything includedours, from the lines above
Runs itU.S. Forest Servicethe agency’s record
Directions
Every line of the receipt · 6

What you actually pay

The sign priceU.S. Forest Service
A night, from$22
Night per camping unit$22
Firewood bundle .$10
The booking feerecreation.gov
Nothing. This campground takes no bookings, so there’s no reservation fee to pay.
What a stay costs
One night, fromDerived$22
A weekend, Friday and Saturday, fromDerived$44

Derived by CAMPANAC: the lowest per-night amount the agency’s fee record states ($22), and no booking fee, because this campground takes no reservations. A weekend here means Friday and Saturday night. Optional charges (an extra vehicle, a second tent, a dump-station fee) are listed separately and aren’t in this total.

How we know this receipt · 5
Sign price: Derived by CAMPANAC from the U.S. Forest Service fee record: a stated per-night amount only · Sep 7, 2026
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: USFS Enterprise Data Warehouse · Aug 24, 2026

record Aug 24, 2026 · How we know all this

Seen something wrong here? Tell us.

Getting there

the map and the coordinate
Coordinate39.03544, -107.99681

Where it is

Source: USFS Enterprise Data Warehouse · Aug 24, 2026

The weather

the next four days

Next four days, and the thirty-year normal

Forecast

Today42°Sunny
Tonight24°Mostly Clear
Saturday44°Sunny
Saturday Night28°Partly Cloudy1% rain

NWS forecast for Cedaredge, CO

Source: National Weather Service, GJT 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
Nick Mountain10,423 acres · 5 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

Jeff Hurd, official portrait

Little Bear Campground - Grand Valley RD is in Colorado’s 3rd congressional district. Its representative, Jeff Hurd (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: Today falls inside the season the agency publishes, and it has posted nothing else. That reading is ours. The U.S. Forest Service’s own database, though, flags it not open with no reason or date; the flag is named under How we know all this.
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
Season: USFS Enterprise Data Warehouse · Aug 24, 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: 0.088 mcd/m² of artificial all-sky glow, ranked against the 522 rated federal campgrounds in Colorado · 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
Fall color: More Than Just Parks foliage tracker, joined to this campground by distance (6.6 km) · Oct 5, 2026
Reported by: iNaturalist fall color observations, reported peak color · Oct 5, 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.
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