Lower Piedra
Closed for want of money or people is a choice somebody made.Ask who decided →
- Right now
- ClosedThe agency’s own sentence, quoted below
- Sites
- 18In the agency’s record
- Season
- May 1 – September 30Open May 1 through September 30
The place
the agency’s own description · what’s there · 1 notices
In the agency’s own words
This location is available on a first-come, first-served basis only. Visitors are required to physically arrive at the campground to purchase and claim a site. Once on-site, you may be able to pay for your campsite(s) by scanning a QR code using the Recreation.gov mobile app, and the Scan and Pay feature. If this option is available, you will need to first download the free Recreation.gov mobile app https://www.recreation.gov/mobile-app prior to your arrival as some remote areas have limited or no cellular service. Keep reading
Facilities
The Lower Piedra Campground is just north of U.S. Highway 160 on the west side of the Piedra River, about 18 miles east of Bayfield and 25 miles west of Pagosa Springs. It is about a half mile up Forest Rd. 621 on the west side of the river (not to be confused with the First Fork Road [Forest Rd. 622] on the east side of the river). The campground offers 14 large, level sites with plenty of shade. Fishing opportunities are available. Contact Info For facility specific information, please call (661) 702-1420.
What the agency tells you
ALERT: Campground will be closed for the 2026 season due to flooding damage caused by the rainstorms in October 2025. The access road has been washed away. The campground will remain closed until repairs can be made.
Tents and rigs
- Sites
- 18
- Hookups
- None
- Accessible sites
- None listed
Around the campground
- On the water
- River
- Fall color · reported 8 days ago, 28 km away
- Patchy color
Nothing to book until it reopensread 15:41 UTC
The campground will remain closed until repairs can be made.
Every one of the next thirty nights is in recreation.gov’s record and not one site is being offered on any of them. That’s a campground closed or not yet released for booking, not a sold-out one.
Tell me when it reopens
Watch for it to come back
One email when the agency reopens it, plus More Than Just Parks dispatches. Unsubscribe any time.
We check the agency’s own record once an hour, at 40 minutes past, and write the first time it stops saying closed.
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.
Every line of the receipt · 8
What you actually pay
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 · 3
What the agency said · 1
The campground will remain closed until repairs can be made.
U.S. Forest Service · posted Sep 9, 2026
Open within 60 miles · 1
The agency’s own word that these are open, not our reading of a season.
- Rio Grande CampgroundRio Grande National Forest · 40 mi · walk-up
recreation.gov availability, read 15:41 UTC · rules read Sep 9, 2026 · record Aug 23, 2026 · How we know all this
The sites
19 records · which ones have room · the site map
The sites, ranked
from 15 mapped sitesAll 19 records
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.
| A | 01 - Host | host pad | 130 ft | |
| A | 02 | standard nonelectric | 97 ft | 148 ft |
| A | 03 | standard nonelectric | 97 ft | 103 ft |
| A | 04 | standard nonelectric | 118 ft | 90 ft |
| A | 05 | standard nonelectric | 110 ft | 53 ft |
| A | 06 | standard nonelectric | 110 ft | 162 ft |
| A | 10 | standard nonelectric | 47 ft | 315 ft |
| B | 07 | standard nonelectric | 128 ft | 263 ft |
| B | 08 | standard nonelectric | 71 ft | 349 ft |
| B | 09 | standard nonelectric | 71 ft | 327 ft |
| C | 11 | standard nonelectric | 133 ft | 286 ft |
| C | 12 | standard nonelectric | 125 ft | 261 ft |
| C | 13 | standard nonelectric | 83 ft | 140 ft |
| C | 14 | standard nonelectric | 83 ft | 82 ft |
| C | 15 | standard nonelectric | 98 ft | 108 ft |
| Scan and Pay | ScanPay 2 | type not stated | ||
| Scan and Pay | ScanPay 3 | type not stated | ||
| Scan and Pay | ScanPay 4 | type not stated | ||
| Scan and Pay | Standard | standard nonelectric | 47 ft | 268 ft |
The agency files 1 more record here that isn’t a site for the night. It names it a host pad. It’s in the table above, marked for what it is, and it isn’t counted as a site.
OpenStreetMap has no toilet mapped within 1 km of this campground, so no site here carries a toilet distance. That’s a gap in the map, not a finding about the campground.
Getting there
the map and the coordinate · the phone number
Where it is
Ute Campground (CO)San Juan National Forest · 4.3 mi
Graham Creek CampgroundSan Juan National Forest · 15 mi
North Canyon CampgroundSan Juan National Forest · 15 mi
Pine Point (Vallecito Reservoir, CO)San Juan National Forest · 15 mi
Pine Point CampgroundSan Juan National Forest · 15 mi
Middle MountainSan Juan National Forest · 16 miThe weather
the next four days · the thirty-year normal
Next four days, and the thirty-year normal
Forecast
NWS forecast for Bayfield, CO
Typical weather
Typical May night 36°F, day 71°F.
Coldest night of the open season: typical May 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 · a letter you can send
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 Piedra 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 →
Who can change it · 3
Filed as maintenance from the agency’s own words “repairs”. That reading is ours. The draft to the agency asks what closed Lower Piedra, what reopening it would cost and what date they’re working towards. The draft to Congress asks them to put the same question in writing and to fund the answer.
- The member who votes the moneyJeff HurdU.S. Representative · Colorado’s 3rd district
- Your senator, on the same appropriationJohn W. HickenlooperU.S. Senator · Colorado
- Your senator, on the same appropriationMichael F. BennetU.S. Senator · Colorado
Read the draft, or change the wording
For the camper who found out at the gate, or a week before the trip. Every draft is written from this campground’s own record (its agency, its unit, its site count and its own weekend) and the buttons above copy whichever wording is selected here.
Asks them to find out what reopening Lower Piedra would cost, and to treat the deferred-maintenance line as the thing that decides it.
Subject Lower Piedra is closed (San Juan National Forest, Colorado)
Dear Jeff Hurd, I’m a constituent in Colorado’s 3rd district. I went to camp at Lower Piedra, San Juan National Forest, Colorado and found it closed. The notice says: "The campground will remain closed until repairs can be made." (https://www.recreation.gov/camping/campgrounds/10165435, read Oct 16, 2026) That’s a maintenance closure, which makes it a budget question before it’s anything else. A campground doesn’t need this work because of bad luck. It needs it because the work was deferred until it couldn’t be deferred any longer. Please ask the U.S. Forest Service, in writing, what reopening Lower Piedra would cost and where that work sits on their own list. And when their budget comes to a vote, treat the recreation and deferred-maintenance lines as the thing that decides whether these 18 campsites are open next season. The people who open these campgrounds, collect the fees and keep the water running are seasonal positions. At GS-5, base pay plus the government's own 36.25% benefit factor, one costs about $47,414 a year. One percent of the $13.3 billion the USS Gerald R. Ford cost to procure would pay for about 2,800 of them for a year. Both figures are the government's own (a Congressional Research Service report and an OPM pay table), and I’m glad to send them. Sent about Lower Piedra (San Juan National Forest, Colorado) via campanac.com
Asks them to find out what reopening Lower Piedra would cost, and to treat the deferred-maintenance line as the thing that decides it.
Subject Lower Piedra is closed (San Juan National Forest, Colorado)
Dear John W. Hickenlooper, I’m a constituent in Colorado. I went to camp at Lower Piedra, San Juan National Forest, Colorado and found it closed. The notice says: "The campground will remain closed until repairs can be made." (https://www.recreation.gov/camping/campgrounds/10165435, read Oct 16, 2026) That’s a maintenance closure, which makes it a budget question before it’s anything else. A campground doesn’t need this work because of bad luck. It needs it because the work was deferred until it couldn’t be deferred any longer. Please ask the U.S. Forest Service, in writing, what reopening Lower Piedra would cost and where that work sits on their own list. And when their budget comes to a vote, treat the recreation and deferred-maintenance lines as the thing that decides whether these 18 campsites are open next season. The people who open these campgrounds, collect the fees and keep the water running are seasonal positions. At GS-5, base pay plus the government's own 36.25% benefit factor, one costs about $47,414 a year. One percent of the $13.3 billion the USS Gerald R. Ford cost to procure would pay for about 2,800 of them for a year. Both figures are the government's own (a Congressional Research Service report and an OPM pay table), and I’m glad to send them. Sent about Lower Piedra (San Juan National Forest, Colorado) via campanac.com
Asks them to find out what reopening Lower Piedra would cost, and to treat the deferred-maintenance line as the thing that decides it.
Subject Lower Piedra is closed (San Juan National Forest, Colorado)
Dear Michael F. Bennet, I’m a constituent in Colorado. I went to camp at Lower Piedra, San Juan National Forest, Colorado and found it closed. The notice says: "The campground will remain closed until repairs can be made." (https://www.recreation.gov/camping/campgrounds/10165435, read Oct 16, 2026) That’s a maintenance closure, which makes it a budget question before it’s anything else. A campground doesn’t need this work because of bad luck. It needs it because the work was deferred until it couldn’t be deferred any longer. Please ask the U.S. Forest Service, in writing, what reopening Lower Piedra would cost and where that work sits on their own list. And when their budget comes to a vote, treat the recreation and deferred-maintenance lines as the thing that decides whether these 18 campsites are open next season. The people who open these campgrounds, collect the fees and keep the water running are seasonal positions. At GS-5, base pay plus the government's own 36.25% benefit factor, one costs about $47,414 a year. One percent of the $13.3 billion the USS Gerald R. Ford cost to procure would pay for about 2,800 of them for a year. Both figures are the government's own (a Congressional Research Service report and an OPM pay table), and I’m glad to send them. Sent about Lower Piedra (San Juan National Forest, Colorado) via campanac.com