Lower Bowns
- Right now
- OpenInside the published season, our reading
- A night
- $20From, per site
- Sites
- 5All of them booked ahead
- Season
- April 1Opens April 1. No closing date published.
The place
the agency’s own description · what’s there · 8 notices
In the agency’s own words
Lower Bowns Campground is located on the east side of Boulder Mountain on the shore of Lower Bowns Reservoir at an elevation of 7,000 feet. Visitors enjoy boating, fishing and exploring local trails. View Lower Bowns Campground Map Recreation Popular activities in the area include hiking, biking, hunting and riding the Rosebud ATV Trail. Lower Bowns Reservoir offers boating, canoeing and fishing for rainbow, brook and cutthroat trout. Keep reading
Facilities
This campground contains three accessible sites: one group site can accommodate up to 50 people, and two single sites can each accommodate up to 10 people. Vault toilets are provided, and roads and parking spurs throughout the site are gravel.
Natural Features
The campground is sparsely forested with pinyon pines and juniper, which offer only limited shade. Boulder Mountain lies to the west of the site, and Capitol Reef National Park's Waterpocket Fold and the Henry Mountains lie to the east.
Nearby Attractions
Capitol Reef National Park is just 45 minutes from the campground. This unique park offers excellent hiking trails, historic sites and breathtaking scenery. Sightseeing along Utah Highway 12, a National Scenic Byway, is very popular. Travelers visit from every corner of the world to gaze upon stunning red rock canyons and desert landscapes.
What the agency tells you
Street legal and non-street legal vehicles are allowed for access and egress only.
Visitors must bring their own drinking water.
This is a ‘pack it in-pack it out’ facility. No garbage services are available. Please bring your own garbage bags.
Everything else this campground posts · 5
There are no electricity, water or sewer site hookups at the campground.
Camping is limited to 16 days.
Any vehicles or trailers that can not fit in the designated site must be relocated to another site purchased at full site price. Check area map for available free parking
Don't Move Firewood: Help prevent the spread of tree-killing pests in our national forests by obtaining firewood near your destination and burning it on-site. For more information visit dontmovefirewood.org.
Discharging a firearm of any kind is prohibited: this includes BB guns, slingshots, paintball guns etc. Take these activities outside of the campground please.
Tents and rigs
- Sites
- 5 · 1 group
- Hookups
- None
- Longest rig
- 99 ft
- Accessible sites
- 5
- Pets
- Allowed
- Campfires
- Allowed, barring fire bans
- Shade
- Every site
Facilities
- Toilets
- Vault Toilets
- “…can each accommodate up to 10 people. Vault toilets are provided, and roads and parking spurs…”
Around the campground
- On the water
- Reservoir
- Biking
- Boating
- Fishing
- Hiking
- Hunting
- Wildlife viewing
- Night sky · 9th darkest of 458 in UT
- Bortle 1
- Fall color · reported 2 days ago, 20 km away
- Patchy color
No reading yet, book on recreation.gov
Every site here is reservable, and the record lists none held back for anyone who drives up.
No availability snapshot inside the last 36 hours, so this page draws nothing rather than ageing a reading into fiction.
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, $20 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
rules read Sep 9, 2026 · rates Oct 1, 2026 · How we know all this
The sites
5 sites · which ones have room · the site map
The sites, ranked
from 5 mapped sitesAll 5 sites
Toilet distances are OpenStreetMap’s, measured for 5 of the 5 sites listed. A site with no reading is unknown, never far.
The price is derived by CAMPANAC, not published per site: the per-night rate this campground publishes for each site’s own site type. 5 of the 5 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.
| LOWER BOWNS | 001 | standard nonelectric | 45 ft | yes | 60 ft | 257 ft | 257 ft | $20 |
| LOWER BOWNS | 002 | standard nonelectric | 48 ft | yes | 60 ft | 256 ft | 285 ft | $20 |
| LOWER BOWNS | 003 | standard nonelectric | 45 ft | yes | 91 ft | 298 ft | 309 ft | $20 |
| LOWER BOWNS | 004 | standard nonelectric | 60 ft | yes | 167 ft | 421 ft | 141 ft | $20 |
| LOWER BOWNS | GP | group standard nonelectric | 99 ft | yes | 378 ft | 198 ft | 76 ft | $75 |
Getting there
the map and the coordinate · the agency’s directions
Where it is
Rosebud ATVDixie National Forest · 2.7 miUpper Pleasant Creek CampgroundDixie National Forest · 3.3 miOak Creek CampgroundDixie National Forest · 3.8 miOak Creek Rec Site (Boulder, UT)Dixie National Forest · 3.8 mi
SingletreeDixie National Forest · 4.8 mi
Group CampsiteCapitol Reef National Park · 12 miFrom Torrey, Utah, take Highway 24 approximately one mile east to the junction with Highway 12. Turn right and travel 16 miles to Forest Road 186. Take FR 186 5 miles to the campground.
The weather
the next four days · the thirty-year normal
Next four days, and the thirty-year normal
Forecast
NWS forecast for Boulder, UT
Typical weather
Typical April night 36°F, day 60°F.
Coldest night of the open season: typical April night 36°F. Bring the bag rated for it.
Daily high and lowDays with 0.10 in or moreOutside the published season
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
Lower Bowns is in Utah’s 2nd congressional district. Its representative, Celeste Maloy (R), votes on the laws that decide what happens to this land. Public-lands grade so far: F. See every public-lands vote →