Outlet Channel Day Use
This place has sites and nobody may sleep in them.Ask for camping here →
- Right now
- Nobody has saidNo season, no closure, no bookings to read
The place
the agency’s own description · what’s there · 1 notices
In the agency’s own words
Outlet Channel Day Use Area sits along Arkabutla Lake and Dam in the hills of northwest Mississippi. The dam project is on the Coldwater River and offers some of the best sailing east of the Mississippi River. Keep reading
Recreation
Families come to Arkabutla Lake to enjoy the great outdoors by fishing, boating, swimming, hiking, and biking. Wildlife management areas around Arkabutla Lake boast a combined 30,000 acres of public hunting lands where whitetail deer, wild turkeys, quail and waterfowl roam. Several trails wind around the lake and throughout the nearby landscape. The Coldwater River Nature Trail System encompasses two hiking trails as well as an interpretive trail that helps educate hikers on the wildlife and ecosystem. The Swinging Bridge Nature Trail is also nearby, and includes a section of land that was part of the river prior to the dam being built. This trail is also an interpretive educational trail. Thousands of people each year visit Arkabutla Lake to go fishing. The lake is home to several species of native fish to Mississippi waters, such as largemouth bass, bream, catfish and crappie.
Facilities
The Outlet Channel has a tent camping area, access to the Swinging Bridge Nature Trail and the Coldwater Trail system. There is also a newly constructed playground, fishing at the outlet channel, individual picnic sites and a group picnic shelter.
Natural Features
The pavilion is situated on the riverfront, among rolling hills forested with a shady mixture of oak, hickory, beech, sweet gum and birch trees.
What the agency tells you
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers reminds all visitors that coast guard approved personal floatation device is required when conducting activities on or in the waters of Arkabutla Lake. These activities include but are not limited to swimming, waterskiing, riding on personal watercraft, kayaking, and other boating related activities. If vessel is under 16 feet in length a PFD is mandatory at all times. If vessel is over 16 feet in length, PFDs are only required while making way under main propulsion.
Nothing here to sleep in
The agency files 1 record here and marks it day use, not overnight. On its own record there’s nothing here to spend the night in.
No availability snapshot inside the last 36 hours, so this page draws nothing rather than ageing a reading into fiction.
Watch for a cancellation
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We read recreation.gov once an hour, at 40 minutes past, and write the first time a site in your window is free for the nights you asked for.
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.
We make nothing when you book. The link goes straight to the government.
Every line of the receipt · 12
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 · 5
rules read Sep 9, 2026 · rates Sep 10, 2026 · How we know all this
The sites
1 records · the site map
All 1 records
Toilet distances are OpenStreetMap’s, measured for 1 of the 1 sites listed. A site with no reading is unknown, never far.
| River - 761 | day use | 163 ft | 722 ft | $75 |
The agency files 1 more record here that isn’t a site for the night. It files it as day use. It’s in the table above, marked for what it is, and it isn’t counted as a site.
Getting there
the map and the coordinate · the agency’s directions · the phone number
Where it is
South Abutment Pavilion0.7 mi
South Abutment Campground0.9 mi
Dub Patton Campground1.3 miKelly's Crossing Campground2.7 mi
Hernando Point Campground3.9 mi
Hernando Point Pavilion4.0 miThe Outlet Channel Recreation area is located just off Scenic Loop 304 on the bottom side of Arkabutla Dam.
The weather
the next four days · the thirty-year normal
Next four days, and the thirty-year normal
Forecast
NWS forecast for Arkabutla, MS
Typical weather
Typical October night 50°F, day 74°F.
Coldest month of the year: typical January night 30°F, below freezing. Bring a bag rated colder than that, and expect ice in the water bottle.
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.
The land, and who answers for it
who answers for it · a letter you can send
Who answers for this land
Outlet Channel Day Use is in Mississippi’s 1st congressional district. Its representative, Trent Kelly (R), votes on the laws that decide what happens to this land. Public-lands grade so far: F. See every public-lands vote →
Who can change it · 3
The agency’s own record files sites here and marks every one of them day use. The draft asks whether any could open to overnight camping, and if not, why.
- The member who votes the moneyTrent KellyU.S. Representative · Mississippi’s 1st district
- Your senator, on the same appropriationCindy Hyde-SmithU.S. Senator · Mississippi
- Your senator, on the same appropriationRoger F. WickerU.S. Senator · Mississippi
Read the draft, or change the wording
Asks them to put the same question to the agency in writing.
Subject Outlet Channel Day Use has sites, and nobody may sleep in them
Dear Trent Kelly, I’m a constituent in Mississippi’s 1st district. Outlet Channel Day Use, Mississippi carries 1 record on the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’s own file, every one of them marked day use rather than overnight. I’m asking you to put one question to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in writing: would they consider opening any of these sites to overnight camping, and if not, why not? Road trips and camping on public land are part of how this country knows itself. It’s where a lot of people meet the place they live in for the first time, and it has never been something you had to be well off, or well organised six months in advance, to do. Sent about Outlet Channel Day Use (Mississippi) via campanac.com
Asks them to put the same question to the agency in writing.
Subject Outlet Channel Day Use has sites, and nobody may sleep in them
Dear Cindy Hyde-Smith, I’m a constituent in Mississippi. Outlet Channel Day Use, Mississippi carries 1 record on the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’s own file, every one of them marked day use rather than overnight. I’m asking you to put one question to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in writing: would they consider opening any of these sites to overnight camping, and if not, why not? Road trips and camping on public land are part of how this country knows itself. It’s where a lot of people meet the place they live in for the first time, and it has never been something you had to be well off, or well organised six months in advance, to do. Sent about Outlet Channel Day Use (Mississippi) via campanac.com
Asks them to put the same question to the agency in writing.
Subject Outlet Channel Day Use has sites, and nobody may sleep in them
Dear Roger F. Wicker, I’m a constituent in Mississippi. Outlet Channel Day Use, Mississippi carries 1 record on the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’s own file, every one of them marked day use rather than overnight. I’m asking you to put one question to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in writing: would they consider opening any of these sites to overnight camping, and if not, why not? Road trips and camping on public land are part of how this country knows itself. It’s where a lot of people meet the place they live in for the first time, and it has never been something you had to be well off, or well organised six months in advance, to do. Sent about Outlet Channel Day Use (Mississippi) via campanac.com