Pelican Lake Campground
- Right now
- Nobody has saidNo season, no closure, no bookings to read
- Sites
- 13All of them booked ahead
The place
the agency’s own description · what’s there · 2 notices
In the agency’s own words
This Campground is on a First Come - First Serve Basis, vistors are required to physically be at the campground to purchase and claim a site. You must also occupy the area the day you pay for it, no advance payments. We encourage our visitors to download the recreation.gov app to take advantage of the Scan & Pay Option. There is also an Iron Ranger on site that you can pay with cash or check Pelican Lake Campground is located at 4,800 feet and has 11 individual campsites and two group sites. Pelican Lake is well known for the outstanding bluegill and bass fishing. Bird watching is also a popular pastime in the spring, when the waterfowl come to live and rear their downy young. Keep reading
Recreation
Pelican Lake is well known for the outstanding bluegill and bass fishing. Bird watching is also a popular pastime in the spring.
Facilities
11 individual sites and two group sites are available. Sites include picnic tables and fire rings. Vault toilets are available within the campground community. Please bring your own water. Campsites are first-come first-served.
Natural Features
Pelican Lake has been a nationally-renowned bluegill fishery since the 1970’s when Jim Zumbo published an article in Outdoor Life on the potential for daily bag limits of 1.5 pound bluegill. Since then, anglers have held high expectations for Pelican Lake. Unfortunately, in 2008 and 2009, adult carp entered Pelican Lake in large numbers and turned the lake from a clear waterbody dominated by largemouth bass and bluegill to a lake dominated by carp. The carp’s ability to outcompete bluegill for food eventually led to a decline in bluegill condition and a few years later, a decline in largemouth bass condition. The Utah Division of Wildlife Resources (UDWR), Bureau of Land Management (BLM), Bureau of Reclamation (BOR), and avid Pelican Lake anglers anticipated this decline and convened a working group that developed a management plan for the lakes future success.
Nearby Attractions
Ouray National Wildlife Refuge Ouray National Wildlife Refuge lies along the Green River in the Uinta Basin of northeastern Utah. The Refuge provides diverse habitat types supporting over 350 fish and wildlife species and offers numerous wildlife-dependent recreational opportunities.
What the agency tells you
This Campground is on a First Come - First Serve Basis, vistors are required to physically be at the campground to purchase and claim a site. You must also occupy the area the day you pay for it, no advance payments.
Water is not available.
Tents and rigs
- Sites
- 13 · 2 group, 11 cabin
- Hookups
- None
- Accessible sites
- None listed
- Pets
- Allowed
- Campfires
- Allowed, barring fire bans
- Shade
- 3 of 11 sites
Facilities
- Toilets
- Vault Toilets
- VAULT TOILETS on 10 of 13 campsite records
- Drinking water
- None, bring your own
- “…within the campground community. Please bring your own water. Campsites are first-come first-served. Natural…”
Around the campground
- On the water
- Lake, River
- Birding
- Boating
- Fishing
- Ice Fishing
- Picnicking
- Water access
- Wildlife viewing
No reading yet, book on recreation.gov
Every site here is reservable, and the record lists none held back for anyone who drives up.
No availability snapshot inside the last 36 hours, so this page draws nothing rather than ageing a reading into fiction.
Watch for a cancellation
Full? Watch it.
One email when a night opens, plus More Than Just Parks dispatches. Unsubscribe any time.
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 · 10
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
rules read Sep 9, 2026 · record Aug 23, 2026 · How we know all this
The sites
13 sites · which ones have room · the site map
The sites, ranked
from 13 mapped sitesAll 13 sites
| One | Site 1 | shelter nonelectric | 74 ft | 820 ft |
| One | Site 10 | shelter nonelectric | 86 ft | 717 ft |
| One | Site 2 | shelter nonelectric | 74 ft | 893 ft |
| One | Site 3 | shelter nonelectric | 35 ft | 951 ft |
| One | Site 4 | shelter nonelectric | 35 ft | 952 ft |
| One | Site 5 | shelter nonelectric | 36 ft | 972 ft |
| One | Site 6 | shelter nonelectric | 113 ft | 977 ft |
| One | Site 7 | shelter nonelectric | 113 ft | 979 ft |
| One | Site 8 | shelter nonelectric | 96 ft | 819 ft |
| One | Site 9 | shelter nonelectric | 86 ft | 744 ft |
| Two | Site 11 | shelter nonelectric | 323 ft | 300 ft |
| Two | Site 12 | group standard nonelectric | 323 ft | 313 ft |
| Two | Site 13 | group standard nonelectric | 551 ft | 431 ft |
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.
Getting there
the map and the coordinate · the agency’s directions · the phone number
Where it is
McCoy Flats Campground13 miParadise Park Campground17 mi
Desolation Gray Canyons Screen CabinsVernal Field Office · 27 mi
Green River CampgroundDinosaur National Monument · 29 mi
Uinta River Group29 mi
Split Mountain Group CampgroundDinosaur National Monument · 29 mi25 miles southwest of Vernal, UT on UT-88
The weather
the next four days · the thirty-year normal
Next four days, and the thirty-year normal
Forecast
NWS forecast for Randlett, UT
Typical weather
Typical October night 33°F, day 67°F.
Coldest month of the year: typical January night 5°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 Julys are colder than the July line. The seven-day forecast above answers the other question.
The land, and who answers for it
what threatens it · who answers for it
What threatens this place
You’re camping on ground somebody wants. We track the threats and the comment deadlines.
Who answers for this land
Pelican Lake Campground is in Utah’s 3rd congressional district. Its representative, Mike Kennedy (R), votes on the laws that decide what happens to this land. Public-lands grade so far: F. See every public-lands vote →