CAMPANAC.Powered by public lands intelligenceMore Than Just Parks
The map
U.S. Forest Service · Malheur National Forest · OR

Lower Camp Creek Campground

2Heads up2 fires, nearest 15 mi
Wildfire
Salmon fire · 15 mi away · 1,433 acres · 100% contained · updated Oct 4, 2026
Wildfire
McCully fire · 28 mi away · 13,604 acres · 91% contained · updated Sep 16, 2026
Fires: NIFC/IRWIN via MTJP wildfire tracker · Oct 14, 2026
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
Nobody has saidNo season, no closure, no bookings to read
A night
$6From, per site
Drawn from the record · 3,590 ft · 60% tree cover · Camp Creek within reach · Bortle 2 sky
3,590 ftElevation
336 ftWater · Camp Creek
18.3 miNE of John Day, OR
60%Tree cover
Bortle 2Night sky · 66th darkest of 770 in OR

The place

the agency’s own description · what’s there

In the agency’s own words

A pleasantly small campground tucked among ponderosa pines along a forest creek. This campground is popular with hunters. Just a short drive away from the beautiful Middle Fork of the John Day River. Less than a mile away is Arch Rock Trail #258 , an ashflow tuff with a scenic arch and several small rockshelters eroded into the outcrop, allowing visitors a place to see fascinating geological features. A bit further at 13 miles away is Magone Lake Campground , a great place to swim, fish or hike.

Source: USFS Enterprise Data Warehouse · Aug 24, 2026

Around the campground

On the water
Lake, River, Creek
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
A night$6Per site, fromthe agency’s fee record
A weekend$12DerivedFriday and Saturday, everything includedours, from the lines above
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
A night, from$6
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 this campground addsits own record
Extra vehicleSee the note

“$6/Night for single unit, $3/Night for extra vehicle” · the U.S. Forest Service’s own fee record

What a stay costs
One night, fromDerived$6
A weekend, Friday and Saturday, fromDerived$12

Derived by CAMPANAC: the lowest per-night amount the agency’s fee record states ($6), 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 · 6
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
What this campground adds: The U.S. Forest Service’s own fee record and notices for this campground, quoted verbatim. An extra-vehicle charge is set locally and appears on no national schedule, so it’s never assumed. · Aug 24, 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
Coordinate44.67252, -118.79960

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

Overnight42°Partly Cloudy
Saturday69°Mostly Sunny
Saturday Night37°Mostly Clear
Sunday67°Mostly Sunny

NWS forecast for Prairie City, OR

Source: National Weather Service, PDT forecast office · Oct 17, 2026

Typical weather

Typical October night 33°F, day 62°F.

Coldest month of the year: typical December night 22°F, below freezing. Bring a bag rated colder than that, and expect ice in the water bottle.

90°32°10°

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 Augusts are colder than the August line. The seven-day forecast above answers the other question.

Measured at: LONG CREEK, OR (USC00355020), 15 miles away and 150 ft higher
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

What threatens this place

developing
Blue Mountains National Forestslogging, rollback · 17 mi
Roadless
Jumpoff Joe3,889 acres · 8 mi · inventoried roadless area
Roadless
Greenhorn Mountain15,936 acres · 9 mi · inventoried roadless area

You’re camping on ground somebody wants. We track the threats and the comment deadlines.

Source: MTJP Threatened Lands map · Sep 30, 2026

Who answers for this land

Cliff Bentz, official portrait

Lower Camp Creek Campground is in Oregon’s 2nd congressional district. Its representative, Cliff Bentz (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 publishes no season and no closure for this campground, and it takes no bookings we can read. That’s a gap in the record and not a locked gate.
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: 0.014 mcd/m² of artificial all-sky glow, ranked against the 770 rated federal campgrounds in Oregon · 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 place of any size: Prairie City, OR, 14.5 mi NNW. Straight line.
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