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U.S. Forest Service · Chequamegon National Forest · WI

Namekagon Lake Recreation Area

5Heads up5 fires, nearest 21 mi
Wildfire
Clements fire · 21 mi away · 0 acres · updated Oct 15, 2026
Wildfire
Redhouse fire · 26 mi away · 22 acres · updated Oct 10, 2026
Wildfire
Chipmunk fire · 41 mi away · 0 acres · updated Oct 16, 2026
Wildfire
Greased Lightnin fire · 43 mi away · 0 acres · updated Oct 15, 2026
Wildfire
Flowage fire · 46 mi away · 8 acres · updated Oct 14, 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
OpenListed open; its database flags it not open
A night
$18From, per site
Season
May 2 – October 31Open May 2 through October 31
Drawn from the record · 1,400 ft · 76% tree cover · Namekagon Lake within reach · Bortle 2 sky
1,400 ftElevation
240 ftWater · Namekagon Lake
20.6 miNE of Little Round Lake, WI
76%Tree cover
Bortle 2Night sky · 19th darkest of 70 in WI
Open May 2 through October 31Today

The place

the agency’s own description · what’s there

In the agency’s own words

Namekagon Lake Recreation Area is a family-friendly campground that runs alongside its namesake lake at the headwaters of the Namekagon River. It is surrounded by a hardwood and hemlock forest. All campsites provide hardened parking area, picnic table, and fire ring. Recycling and trash dumpsters are provided. There is a day-use area with a picnic shelter, several picnic tables with pedestal grills, a basketball court, a sandy swimming beach, a boat landing, and a fishing pier. Potable water is available from an electric well. Vault toilets are provided throughout campground and day-use area. Keep reading

Namekagon Campground is an ideal location for a base camp with its close proximity to a number of hiking and biking trails. Famous for its great fishery, this 3,227-acre lake offers excellent fishing for musky, pike, walleye, bass, and other fish varieties. It is the perfect spot to kayak, canoe, jet ski, swim or take a boat ride to one of the many restaurants along the shoreline. Wildlife watching opportunities are abundant as elk, eagles, loons and other wildlife are often spotted in the area. The Namekagon Trail is located just across the road from the campground entrance. This one-mile trail loop is great for beginner hikers. The campground features a picnic shelter available for larger gatherings and a boat ramp. There is a $5 recreation use fee for the boat landing. This does not apply to registered campers. The campground is located near the Rock Lake National Recreation Trail, CAMBA Mountain Bike Trails, North Country National Scenic Trail and Porcupine Lake Wilderness Area. So, if you like to swim, boat, fish, hike, or picnic, then the Namekagon Lake Recreation Area is the place for you, located 20 minutes northeast of Hayward. Namekagon Lake Recreation Area is one of our dog friendly recreation areas.

Source: USFS Enterprise Data Warehouse · Aug 24, 2026

Facilities

Toilets
Vault Toilets
“…is available from an electric well. Vault toilets are provided throughout campground and day-use…”
Drinking water
Yes
“…a boat landing, and a fishing pier. Potable water is available from an electric well. Vault toilets…”
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
Lake, River, 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
A night$18Per site, fromthe agency’s fee record
A weekend$36DerivedFriday and Saturday, everything includedours, from the lines above
Runs itU.S. Forest Servicethe agency’s record
Directions
Every line of the receipt · 11

What you actually pay

The sign priceU.S. Forest Service
A night, from$18
Camping: Individual campsite fee is $18/night, payable at the fee envelope tube at the site.
Camping fees are $9 with use of Interagency Senior or Access Pass.
Pass discounts apply only to the fee for the campsite physically occupied by the pass holder.
Boat Landing and Picnic: There is a $5 day use pass for use of the boat landing and picnic area.
The Forest also has an annual pass available for $30.
The USDA Forest Service honors all four Interagency Recreation Passes that may be applied at National Park Service, Bureau of Land Management, Bureau of Reclamation and U.S.
Fish and Wildlife sites charging recreation use fees.
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
One night, fromDerived$18
A weekend, Friday and Saturday, fromDerived$36

Derived by CAMPANAC: the lowest per-night amount the agency’s fee record states ($18), and no booking fee, because this campground takes no reservations. A weekend here means Friday and Saturday night. Optional charges (an extra vehicle, a second tent, a dump-station fee) are listed separately and aren’t in this total.

How we know this receipt · 5
Sign price: Derived by CAMPANAC from the U.S. Forest Service fee record: a stated per-night amount only · Sep 7, 2026
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
Coordinate46.24440, -91.08500

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

Today57°Sunny
Tonight37°Clear
Sunday61°Sunny
Sunday Night35°Mostly Clear

NWS forecast for Grand View, WI

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

Typical weather

Typical October night 34°F, day 53°F.

Coldest night of the open season: typical October night 34°F. Bring the bag rated for it.

90°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: CLAM LAKE 4W, WI (USC00471604), 7 miles away and 98 ft higher
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
Tea Lake5,510 acres · 8 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

Tom Tiffany, official portrait

Namekagon Lake Recreation Area is in Wisconsin’s 7th congressional district. Its representative, Tom Tiffany (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 open right now. Its own recreation 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: 0.078 mcd/m² of artificial all-sky glow, ranked against the 70 rated federal campgrounds in Wisconsin · 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: Grand View, WI, 8.2 mi S (a census designated place). 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