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U.S. Forest Service · San Juan National Forest · CO

Lower Hermosa Campground

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
Closed for the seasonOut of the season the agency publishes
Season
May 1 – September 30Open May 1 through September 30
Drawn from the record · 7,680 ft · 29% tree cover · Hermosa Creek within reach · Bortle 3 sky
7,680 ftElevation
1,486 ftWater · Hermosa Creek
8.8 miN of Durango, CO
29%Tree cover
Bortle 3Night sky · 295th darkest of 522 in CO
Open May 1 through September 30Today

The place

the agency’s own description · what’s there

In the agency’s own words

The Lower Hermosa Campground has 19 sites. Although horses are not allowed in the campground, the adjacent Lower Hermosa Creek Trailhead has an area with a horse corral for overnight horse camping, as well as hitching posts. The parking lot is large enough for vehicles and horse trailers. Services include vault toliet, trash pickup, campfire grates, and picnic tables. Bear-safe food storage is recommended. Please note, there is no water available at this campground.

Source: USFS Enterprise Data Warehouse · Aug 24, 2026

Facilities

Drinking water
None, bring your own
“…storage is recommended. Please note, there is no water available at this campground.”
Source: read from the agency description, shown above · Sep 12, 2026

Around the campground

On the water
Creek
Fall color · reported 8 days ago, 27 km away
Patchy color
Source: Stated in the agency description
Fall color: More Than Just Parks foliage tracker, joined to this campground by distance (27 km) · Oct 8, 2026

Nothing to book, just show up

One of 1,623 federal campgrounds where the site still goes to whoever pulls in first. 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
Runs itRocky Mountain Recreation CompanyA private concessionaire under permit from U.S. Forest Service (parent: ExplorUS)the operator link
Directions
Every line of the receipt · 3

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.
The booking feerecreation.gov
Nothing. This campground takes no bookings, so there’s no reservation fee to pay.
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
Coordinate37.45440, -107.85697

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

Today61°Sunny
Tonight34°Clear
Saturday63°Sunny
Saturday Night36°Partly Cloudy2% rain

NWS forecast for Durango, CO

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

Typical weather

Typical May night 37°F, day 71°F.

Coldest night of the open season: typical May night 37°F. Bring the bag rated for it.

90°32°0°

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.

Measured at: DURANGO, CO (USC00052441), 11 miles away and 919 ft lower
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
Hermosa141,383 acres · 9 mi · inventoried roadless area
Roadless
East Animas15,238 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

Jeff Hurd, official portrait

Lower Hermosa Campground 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: The agency lists it out of season. The season it publishes is the bar below.
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: 0.093 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 (27 km) · Oct 8, 2026
Reported by: iNaturalist fall color observations, reported patchy color · Oct 8, 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