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U.S. Forest Service · San Gabriel Mountains National Monument · CA

Messenger Flats Campground

5Heads up5 fires, nearest 6 mi
Wildfire
Lac-373787 fire · 5.9 mi away · updated Oct 16, 2026
Wildfire
Lac-373293 fire · 8.0 mi away · updated Oct 16, 2026
Wildfire
Lac-373835 fire · 9.9 mi away · updated Oct 16, 2026
Wildfire
Norma fire · 11 mi away · updated Oct 15, 2026
Wildfire
Bouquet fire · 17 mi away · 1,048 acres · 100% contained · updated Oct 13, 2026
Fires: NIFC/IRWIN via MTJP wildfire tracker · Oct 16, 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
Photos · U.S. Forest Service
5,860 ftElevation
1.1 miWater · an unnamed streamOcean · 30.8 mi · to the Pacific Ocean
5.1 miS of Acton, CA
24%Tree cover
Bortle 5Night sky · 1179th darkest of 1,201 in CA

The place

the agency’s own description · what’s there

In the agency’s own words

This campground is hike-in only . General Camping Info : Find helpful guidance and tips for an enjoyable trip to the forest! Know Fire & Other Restrictions Before You Go! : These conditions can affect your entire trip. For example, Extreme and Critical fire use restrictions mean no campfires and no portable cooking systems/stoves. Bring cold food and no S'mores. Be Bear Aware! : Bear safety is critical, for the safety of your group and/or you, as well as our bears. Help keep bears wild by following these tips. Keep reading

Elevation: 5,500-foot elevation Amenities: 10 campsites with picnic tables and campfire rings, vault toilets. There is no water available. Please bring enough water for cooking, cleaning, drinking, and extinguishing campfires. Hiking: Just a short walk to the Pacific Crest Trail located across from the campground entrance Corrals: Two horse corrals available. Fees: Camping - Adventure Pass/America the Beautiful Pass Required. Campsites are first come-first served. No reserving or holding of campsites allowed. Day use - Adventure Pass or America the Beautiful Pass required.

Source: USFS Enterprise Data Warehouse · Aug 24, 2026

Facilities

Toilets
Vault Toilets
“…with picnic tables and campfire rings, vault toilets. There is no water available. Please bring enough…”
Drinking water
None, bring your own
“…and campfire rings, vault toilets. There is no water available. Please bring enough water for cooking,…”
Source: read from the agency description, shown above · Sep 12, 2026

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 itU.S. Forest Servicethe agency’s record
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.
Adventure Pass or America the Beautiful Pass required.
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
Coordinate34.37987, -118.18978

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

This Afternoon65°Sunny
Tonight56°Mostly Clear
Saturday67°Mostly Sunny
Saturday Night55°Mostly Clear

NWS forecast for Acton, CA

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

Typical weather

Typical October night 51°F, day 72°F.

Coldest month of the year: typical February night 37°F. Bring the bag rated for it.

90°30°

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: MT WILSON CBS, CA (USC00046006), 12 miles away and 150 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
Roadless
Strawberry Peak7,245 acres · 7 mi · inventoried roadless area
Roadless
Arroyo Seco4,703 acres · 9 mi · inventoried roadless area
Roadless
Magic Mountain15,542 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

Laura Friedman, official portrait

Messenger Flats Campground is in California’s 30th congressional district. Its representative, Laura Friedman (D), votes on the laws that decide what happens to this land. Public-lands grade so far: A+. 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: 4.2 mcd/m² of artificial all-sky glow, ranked against the 1,201 rated federal campgrounds in California · 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 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