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

McPhee Campground

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
OpenInside the published season, our reading; a database flag says not open
Season
May 1Opens May 1. No closing date published.
7,160 ftElevation
1,363 ftWater · McPhee Reservoir
8.2 miN of Cortez, CO
0%Tree cover
Bortle 3Night sky · 340th darkest of 522 in CO
Opens May 1. No closing date published.Today

The place

the agency’s own description · what’s there

In the agency’s own words

McPhee Reservoir, the largest in the San Juan National Forest and second largest in Colorado, has 50 miles of shoreline in piñon, juniper, and sagebrush country. The McPhee Campground is on a mesa 500 feet above the reservoir, with road access to the McPhee Boat Launch area. The McPhee Campground has 71 campsites on 2 loops with paved access. There are 50 reservable campsites, 24 sites with electric hookups, and 2 sites offer tables and toilets accommodating wheelchairs. A dozen campsites are walk-ins with tent pads near scenic overlooks. Keep reading

The adjacent McPhee Group Area has 4 group campsites available for reservation (with limited electrical hookups). There are volleyball posts, a ball field, and horseshoe pits (you supply the equipment). Services include potable water, trash pickup, vault toilets, picnic tables, and fire grates. Between October and May, there are no services (water, trash pick up or restrooms). Please keep the campground clean and pack out any trash! This campground remains partially open during hunting season, weather dependent. Limited campsites, no services but toilets available.

Source: USFS Enterprise Data Warehouse · Aug 24, 2026

Facilities

Toilets
Vault Toilets
“…include potable water, trash pickup, vault toilets, picnic tables, and fire grates. Between October…”
Drinking water
Yes
“…supply the equipment). Services include potable water, trash pickup, vault toilets, picnic tables, and…”
Boat ramp
Yes
Source: Stated in the agency description
Water, toilets and showers: read from the agency description, shown above · Sep 12, 2026

Around the campground

On the water
Reservoir, Beach
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
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 · 4

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.
Standard: $27 Electrical Hookup: $36 Group$100
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 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
Coordinate37.49690, -108.55330

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

Today64°Sunny
Tonight41°Partly Cloudy6% rain
Sunday59°Mostly Cloudy then Slight Chance Rain Showers15% rain
Sunday Night43°Chance Rain Showers then Mostly Cloudy26% rain

NWS forecast for Dolores, CO

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

Typical weather

Typical May night 39°F, day 72°F.

Coldest night of the open season: typical May night 39°F. Bring the bag rated for it.

100°32°10°

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: YELLOW JACKET 2W, CO (USC00059275), 11 miles away and 227 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

What threatens this place

Watch

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

Source: MTJP Threatened Lands map · Oct 3, 2026

Who answers for this land

Jeff Hurd, official portrait

McPhee 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: Today falls inside the season the agency publishes, and it has posted nothing else. That reading is ours. The U.S. Forest Service’s own database, though, flags it not open with no reason or date; the flag is named under How we know all this.
Listed not open: USFS EDW Recreation Opportunities, openstatus field: a not-open flag in a database, with no reason and no date published; read there since Sep 9, 2026. A flag, not a notice, so this page doesn’t call it a closure. · Oct 17, 2026
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: 0.12 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
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: Dolores, CO, 2.6 mi WNW. 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