Orland Buttes
1Heads up1 fire 44 mi away
- Right now
- Closedrecreation.gov lists every site closed this weekend, read 16:21 UTC
- A night
- $20When it reopens, per site
- Sites
- 36In the agency’s record
The place
the agency’s own description · what’s there · 8 notices
In the agency’s own words
Orland Buttes Recreation Area is at Black Butte Lake, situated at the northern end of the Sacramento valley, 100 miles north of Sacramento, CA and 30 miles south of Red Bluff, CA. The lake is a popular meeting place for water sports and outdoor euthusiasts, so bring family and friends for an incredibly scenic getaway. Keep reading
Recreation
Find excitement with wake boarding and sailing or explore the Paul Thomas trail for hiking. Black Butte is renowed fro its warm-water fishing, including catches such as crappie, channel catfinsh, and large and small mouth bass. Disc golf is also a popular activity here.
Facilities
The family-friendly campground offers 35 campsites and a group campground that fits 50. Conveniences include showers, a boat ramp complex, and a 18-hole disc golf course. No electric hookups or water hookups are available. The area is open seasonaly from 1 April through the second Monday in September.
Natural Features
Black Butte Lake was formed in 1963 with the completion of Black Butte Lake Dam on Stony Creek. The lake's surface area measures 4460 acres when water levels are high. Black basalt buttes and blue oak woodland hug the lake's 40 miles of shoreline.
Nearby Attractions
Horeseback riders can make use of the horse trails at Grizzly Flat and Burris Creek. Buckhorn Recreation Area has 13 miles of fitness trails for hiking, running, and biking.
What the agency tells you
Limited Sanitation Facilities Due to ongoing sanitation infrastructure issues, flushing toilets and showers will not be available. Portable restrooms and handwashing stations will be in place to support public health and safety. These facilities will be located near existing restroom areas. Potable water and dump stations will remain available for visitor use.
Vehicle Pass Info: Each campsite allows up to 4 vehicles* (up to 20 vehicles for group use area). Please print your reservation or write your reservation # and the reserved camper’s last name, and place it on the dashboard of each vehicle while in the recreation area. (*Please note: 4 vehicles may not fit within each campsite’s parking area.)
There are no electric/water/sewer hookups. A dump station and water filling station is available.
Everything else this campground posts · 5
Please adhere to all road signs. All vehicles must face with the flow of traffic in case of an emergency.
Direct access to the lake is limited due to steep terrain.
No fireworks allowed
Entrance gates close at 10 pm from April 1 through Sept. 30th. Quiet hours are from 10 pm to 6 am.
Don't Move Firewood: Protect your forests from tree-killing pests by buying your firewood locally and burning it on-site. Visit Dontmovefirewood.org for further information.
Tents and rigs
- Sites
- 36 · 1 group
- Hookups
- 1 electric
- Longest rig
- 115 ft
- Paved pads
- 35 of 36
- Accessible sites
- 1
- Pets
- Allowed
- Campfires
- Allowed, barring fire bans
- Shade
- Every site
Facilities
- Boat ramp
- Yes
- Stay limit
- 14 nights
- recreation.gov facility rule maxStay
Around the campground
- On the water
- Lake, Creek, Beach
- Boating
- Fishing
- Hiking
- Hunting
- Swimming
- Wildlife viewing
- Night sky · 645th darkest of 1,201 in CA
- Bortle 3
Nothing to book until it reopensread 16:21 UTC
recreation.gov lists every site closed this weekend
Every one of the next thirty nights is in recreation.gov’s record and not one site is being offered on any of them. That’s a campground closed or not yet released for booking, not a sold-out one.
Tell me when it reopens
Watch for it to come back
One email when the agency reopens it, plus More Than Just Parks dispatches. Unsubscribe any time.
We check the agency’s own record once an hour, at 40 minutes past, and write the first time it stops saying closed.
Scanners that check every few minutes exist, and most of them charge. This one is free, it reads the same calendar, and it won’t always be first.
Every line of the receipt · 11
What you actually pay
Who keeps the booking fee
The agency’s own policy text says the reservation fee and the cancellation processing fee are “retained by the reservation service contractor”, and that a campground concessionaire will decline to refund them because “they did not receive these fees”. Recreation.gov is run under contract by Booz Allen Hamilton. What share of your booking fee the contractor keeps isn’t published in any federal dataset we can read, so we print no number for it. Our reporting on the contract →
How we know this receipt · 4
Why this page can’t say why
recreation.gov lists every site at Orland Buttes closed this Friday and Saturday night. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has published no closure notice we hold, so this page can’t say why, and it won’t fill the gap with a guess. A closed night isn’t a sold-out one: the reservations its record still carries were taken before the sites were closed.
There’s no notice to quote and no reason to argue with, so this page offers you the watch and the list below, and no letter.
Open within 60 miles · 4
The agency’s own word that these are open, not our reading of a season.
- Potato Patch CampgroundLassen National Forest · 52 mi · walk-up
- Horse Camp Primitive CampgroundWhiskeytown-Shasta-Trinity National Recreation Area · 56 mi · 2 sites
- Peltier Bridge Primitive CampgroundWhiskeytown-Shasta-Trinity National Recreation Area · 57 mi · 9 sites
- Brandy Creek RVWhiskeytown-Shasta-Trinity National Recreation Area · 60 mi · some walk-up · 15 sites
recreation.gov availability, read 16:21 UTC · rules read Sep 9, 2026 · rates Sep 10, 2026 · How we know all this
The sites
36 sites · which ones have room · the site map
The sites, ranked
from 35 mapped sitesAll 36 sites
The price is derived by CAMPANAC, not published per site: the per-night rate this campground publishes for each site’s own site type. 34 of the 36 sites listed carry one, and a site whose type has no published rate sits out of the price rather than being called free.
| OBUT | OB01 | standard nonelectric | 20 ft | 230 ft | 641 ft | $20 | |
| OBUT | OB02 | standard nonelectric | 50 ft | 118 ft | 580 ft | $20 | |
| OBUT | OB03 | standard nonelectric | 73 ft | 65 ft | 697 ft | $20 | |
| OBUT | OB04 | standard nonelectric | 55 ft | 51 ft | 673 ft | $20 | |
| OBUT | OB05 | standard nonelectric | 55 ft | 51 ft | 641 ft | $20 | |
| OBUT | OB06 | standard nonelectric | 90 ft | 53 ft | 553 ft | $20 | |
| OBUT | OB07 | standard nonelectric | 115 ft | 53 ft | 507 ft | $20 | |
| OBUT | OB08 | standard nonelectric | 53 ft | 65 ft | 161 ft | $20 | |
| OBUT | OB09 | standard nonelectric | 53 ft | 44 ft | 242 ft | $20 | |
| OBUT | OB10 | standard nonelectric | 30 ft | 44 ft | 225 ft | $20 | |
| OBUT | OB11 | standard nonelectric | 50 ft | 123 ft | 268 ft | $20 | |
| OBUT | OB12 | standard nonelectric | 42 ft | 84 ft | 147 ft | $20 | |
| OBUT | OB13 | standard nonelectric | 36 ft | 54 ft | 353 ft | $20 | |
| OBUT | OB14 | standard electric | 36 ft | yes | 101 ft | 252 ft | |
| OBUT | OB15 | standard nonelectric | 40 ft | 54 ft | 405 ft | $20 | |
| OBUT | OB16 | standard nonelectric | 25 ft | 85 ft | 65 ft | $20 | |
| OBUT | OB17 | standard nonelectric | 30 ft | 56 ft | 72 ft | $20 | |
| OBUT | OB18 | standard nonelectric | 36 ft | 56 ft | 99 ft | $20 | |
| OBUT | OB19 | standard nonelectric | 50 ft | 44 ft | 165 ft | $20 | |
| OBUT | OB20 | standard nonelectric | 20 ft | 83 ft | 125 ft | $20 | |
| OBUT | OB21 | standard nonelectric | 41 ft | 81 ft | 179 ft | $20 | |
| OBUT | OB22 | standard nonelectric | 25 ft | 44 ft | 128 ft | $20 | |
| OBUT | OB23 | standard nonelectric | 45 ft | 73 ft | 250 ft | $20 | |
| OBUT | OB24 | type not stated | 60 ft | 258 ft | |||
| OBUT | OB25 | standard nonelectric | 45 ft | 73 ft | 305 ft | $20 | |
| OBUT | OB26 | standard nonelectric | 48 ft | 75 ft | 323 ft | $20 | |
| OBUT | OB27 | standard nonelectric | 60 ft | 76 ft | 478 ft | $20 | |
| OBUT | OB28 | standard nonelectric | 74 ft | 76 ft | 402 ft | $20 | |
| OBUT | OB29 | standard nonelectric | 30 ft | 65 ft | 181 ft | $20 | |
| OBUT | OB30 | standard nonelectric | 29 ft | 94 ft | 101 ft | $20 | |
| OBUT | OB31 | standard nonelectric | 20 ft | 32 ft | 239 ft | $20 | |
| OBUT | OB32 | standard nonelectric | 57 ft | 109 ft | 242 ft | $20 | |
| OBUT | OB33 | standard nonelectric | 40 ft | 89 ft | 350 ft | $20 | |
| OBUT | OB34 | standard nonelectric | 84 ft | 32 ft | 268 ft | $20 | |
| OBUT | OB35 | standard nonelectric | 47 ft | 84 ft | 360 ft | $20 | |
| OBUT | OBGUA | group standard nonelectric | 35 ft | 291 ft | 445 ft | $130 |
OpenStreetMap has no toilet mapped within 1 km of this campground, so no site here carries a toilet distance. That’s a gap in the map, not a finding about the campground.
25 of 36 listed
Getting there
the map and the coordinate · the agency’s directions · the phone number
Where it is
Buckhorn2.9 mi
Pines Group Site - Stony Gorge Reservoir16 miHorse Camp19 miWhitlock CampgroundMendocino National Forest · 21 miWyandotte Campground23 miKingsley Glade CampgroundMendocino National Forest · 24 miFrom Interstate 5, take the Black Butte Lake exit at Orland, CA. Travel west on County Road 200/Newville Road for 6 miles. Turn left on County Road 206 and drive 4 miles to the campground.
The weather
the next four days · the thirty-year normal
Next four days, and the thirty-year normal
Forecast
NWS forecast for Orland, CA
Typical weather
Typical October night 51°F, day 80°F.
Coldest month of the year: typical December night 37°F. Bring the bag rated for it.
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.
The land, and who answers for it
who answers for it
Who answers for this land
Orland Buttes is in California’s 1st congressional district. Whoever holds it votes on the laws that decide what happens to this land. See how its representative votes on public lands →
Our roster still carries Doug LaMalfa for this district and the current federal record doesn’t list them as sitting, so we’re not naming a representative here until the two agree.