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National Park Service · Lake Meredith National Recreation Area · TX

McBride Canyon and Mullinaw Creek Campgrounds

4Heads uppark alerts
Information
Application for Special Use Permit Each applicant is required to complete a new "Application For Special Use Permit" prior to any new permit being issued
Information
Road Construction Work to begin May 4-October 24 Road construction work to occur Monday thru Friday between the hours of 7:00 am and 8:00 pm, weather permitting. Expect delays of up to 30 minutes during active construction periods.
Information
Roadwork to Begin at Sanford Yake Campground Monday, July 13th The National Park Service announces that Federal Highway Administration contractors will begin roadway and pavement maintenance at Sanford Yake Campground starting Monday, July 13, 2026. This project will include chip seal, micro seal…
Information
Condition of Turkey Creek Trail The South Turkey Creek Trail, located near the Harbor Bay Campground Area, is currently open for hiking for the first mile; however, the remainder of the trail is underwater and cannot be safely accessed.
Alerts: National Park Service alerts API · Oct 17, 2026
First come, first servedNo reservation, and none to be had: all 40 sites go to whoever pulls in first.

This is how it should work.

Get directions
Right now
Nobody has saidNo season, no closure, no bookings to read
Sites
4040 of them walk-up
Photos · NPS Photo
2,940 ftElevation
229 ftWater · Lake Meredith
10.9 miSW of Fritch, TX
40Walk-up sites
0%Tree cover

The place

the agency’s own description · what’s there

In the agency’s own words

These areas are located south of the lake off of State Highway 136. There are large cottonwood trees that provide shade. The Mullinaw Creek area features the expanded Mullinaw Trails System . This trail system is open to hiking, biking, and horseback riding. NO OFF ROAD VEHICLES ALLOWED. No drinking water or flush toilets; vault-evaporator toilets only. Picnic tables, shade shelters, and grills. Horse corrals are located at Mullinaw Campground. The dirt roads can become impassable after rain.

Source: Recreation.gov data (RIDB), full extract · Aug 23, 2026

Facilities

Toilets
Vault Toilets - year round
Drinking water
None, bring your own
Source: National Park Service and agency records

Around the campground

On the water
Lake, Creek
Night sky · 58th darkest of 154 in TX
Bortle 4
Source: Stated in the agency description · Aug 23, 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 · Sep 8, 2026
Official page →

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 agency’s record
Runs itNational Park Servicethe agency’s record
Directions
Every line of the receipt · 3

What you actually pay

The sign priceNational Park Service
The National Park 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: Recreation.gov data (RIDB), full extract · Aug 23, 2026

rules read Sep 7, 2026 · record Aug 23, 2026 · How we know all this

Seen something wrong here? Tell us.

Getting there

the map and the coordinate · the phone number
Coordinate35.52945, -101.75943
The agency’s pageOfficial page ↗

Where it is

Source: Recreation.gov data (RIDB), full extract · Aug 23, 2026

The weather

the next four days · the thirty-year normal

Next four days, and the thirty-year normal

Forecast

Overnight34°Widespread Frost
Saturday63°Widespread Frost then Sunny
Saturday Night40°Mostly Clear
Sunday68°Areas Of Frost then Sunny

NWS forecast for Fritch, TX

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

Typical weather

Typical October night 43°F, day 75°F.

Coldest month of the year: typical January night 21°F, below freezing. Bring a bag rated colder than that, and expect ice in the water bottle.

110°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 Julys are colder than the July line. The seven-day forecast above answers the other question.

Measured at: SANFORD DAM, TX (USC00418040), 17 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

who answers for it

Who answers for this land

Ronny Jackson, official portrait

McBride Canyon and Mullinaw Creek Campgrounds is in Texas’s 13th congressional district. Its representative, Ronny Jackson (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: National Park 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: the number below is the only way to be sure.
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: 0.45 mcd/m² of artificial all-sky glow, ranked against the 154 rated federal campgrounds in Texas · 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 Park 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