U.S. Forest Service · Tahoe National Forest · CA
Onion Valley Campground
3Heads up3 fires, nearest 3 mi
Wildfire
Spaulding fire · 3.4 mi away · 2 acres · updated Oct 16, 2026
Wildfire
Old fire · 19 mi away · 0 acres · updated Oct 16, 2026
Wildfire
Peak fire · 25 mi away · 0 acres · updated Oct 15, 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.
- Right now
- Shut for nowOutside the published season, our reading
- Season
- – October 15Closes October 15. No opening date published.
4,790 ftElevation
51 ftWater · an unnamed stream
17.7 miNE of Foresthill, CA
50%Tree cover
Bortle 3Night sky · 807th darkest of 1,201 in CA
Closes October 15. No opening date published.Today
The place
the agency’s own description · what’s there
In the agency’s own words
Onion Valley Campground is located on a beautiful creek in a remote location on a beautiful meadow. It is shaded by cedar, pine, and fir trees and is a pleasant escape.
Source: USFS Enterprise Data Warehouse · Aug 24, 2026
Around the campground
- On the water
- Creek, Meadow
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 itU.S. Forest Servicethe agency’s record
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.
Site$18
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
Getting there
the map and the coordinate
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
Today78°Sunny
Tonight54°Clear
Saturday71°Sunny
Saturday Night51°Clear
NWS forecast for Alta, CA
Source: National Weather Service, STO forecast office · Oct 16, 2026
Typical weather
Typical October night 48°F, day 63°F.
90°32°20°
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: BLUE CANYON AP, CA (USW00023225), 3 miles away and 486 ft higher
The land, and who answers for it
what threatens it · who answers for it
Roadless country, and what’s coming for it
Roadless
Roadless
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
Onion Valley Campground is in California’s 3rd congressional district. Its representative, Kevin Kiley (I), votes on the laws that decide what happens to this land. Public-lands grade so far: F. See every public-lands vote →
How we know
every fact on this page, and where it came from
Right now: Today falls outside the season the agency publishes, and it has posted nothing else. That reading is ours.
Season: USFS Enterprise Data Warehouse · Aug 24, 2026
Elevation: USGS 3DEP elevation point query at this campground’s coordinate · Sep 7, 2026
Tree cover: NLCD Tree Canopy Cover 2024 (USDA Forest Service / MRLC), one 30 m cell at this coordinate · Sep 9, 2026
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: Alta, CA, 7.3 mi ENE (a census designated place). Straight line.