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U.S. Forest Service · Cherokee National Forest · TN

Little Oak Campground

The agency doesn’t say how you get a siteIts record carries no access type, so treat it as a place to phone before you drive.
Get directionsWhat it costs, and the rules
Right now
Listed not openA database flag with no reason and no date
Drawn from the record · 1,910 ft · 33% tree cover · water within reach · Bortle 4 sky
1,910 ftElevation
497 ftWater · an unnamed stream
5.8 miSE of Bristol, TN
33%Tree cover
Bortle 4Night sky · 75th darkest of 95 in TN

The place

the agency’s own description · what’s there

In the agency’s own words

LITTLE OAK CAMPGROUND IS CURRENTLY CLOSED DUE TO EFFECTS FROM HELENE. Looking to camp near a large lake? Try Little Oak Recreation Area, located on a peninsula along the eastern shore of South Holston Lake in Sullivan County. In this campground, most of the 68 universally-accessible sites have lake views and many have direct access. Little Oak is a designated Watchable Wildlife Area with two interpretive trails. A concrete boat ramp provides a popular launch site into South Holston Lake, and is for use by registered campers and their guests only . Many of the campsites are reservable by going to Recreation.gov or by calling 1-877-444-6777 for your convenience. Little Oak Campground Map

Source: USFS Enterprise Data Warehouse · Aug 24, 2026

Facilities

Showers
Seasonal Showers
“Camping is $12 per site starting late April thru mid-October, including water and hot showers.”
Boat ramp
Yes
Source: Stated in the agency description
Water, toilets and showers: read from the agency fee text, shown above · Sep 12, 2026

Around the campground

On the water
Lake
Source: Stated in the agency description

Phone before you drive

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.

Booking window6 months outBooking opens 6 months ahead; today unlocks arrivals through April 16, 2027. The agency publishes no reservable season in the record we hold, so the window may close earlier than that.recreation.gov
Runs itU.S. Forest Servicethe agency’s record
Directions
Every line of the receipt · 5

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.
Camping is $12 per site starting late April thru mid-October, including water and hot showers.
Site during shoulder seasons with limited facilities includi ng no water, which includes showers (early thru late-April and mid-October thru end of season, or when water is not available).$10
The booking feerecreation.gov
We hold no recreation.gov booking record for this campground, so we can’t say whether a booking fee applies.
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: 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
Coordinate36.51502, -82.04167

Where it is

Source: USFS Enterprise Data Warehouse · Aug 24, 2026

The weather

the next four days · the thirty-year normal

Next four days, and the thirty-year normal

Forecast

This Afternoon80°Rain Showers Likely61% rain
Tonight46°Rain Showers96% rain
Saturday53°Rain Showers Likely then Mostly Cloudy63% rain
Saturday Night36°Mostly Clear

NWS forecast for Bristol, TN

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

Typical weather

Typical October night 43°F, day 69°F.

Coldest month of the year: typical January night 24°F, below freezing. Bring a bag rated colder than that, and expect ice in the water bottle.

90°32°20°

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.

Measured at: ABINGDON 3S, VA (USC00440021), 11 miles away and at about the same elevation
Source: NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, U.S. Climate Normals 1991-2020, monthly normals · Sep 8, 2026

The land, and who answers for it

what threatens it · who answers for it

Roadless country, and what’s coming for it

Roadless
Flint Mill Gap9,494 acres · 4 mi · inventoried roadless area
Roadless
Big Laurel Branch Addition5,577 acres · 9 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

Diana Harshbarger, official portrait

Little Oak Campground is in Tennessee’s 1st congressional district. Its representative, Diana Harshbarger (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: 1.1 mcd/m² of artificial all-sky glow, ranked against the 95 rated federal campgrounds in Tennessee · 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.
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