CAMPANAC.Powered by public lands intelligenceMore Than Just Parks
The map
U.S. Forest Service · Tonto National Forest · AZ

Pinal & Upper Pinal Campgrounds

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 directions
Right now
OpenInside the published season, our reading
Season
May 1Opens May 1. No closing date published.
Drawn from the record · 7,680 ft · 33% tree cover · Bortle 4 sky
7,680 ftElevation
3.7 miWater · CCC One Tank, a pond
5.3 miSW of Globe, AZ
33%Tree cover
Bortle 4Night sky · 188th darkest of 262 in AZ
Opens May 1. No closing date published.Today

The place

the agency’s own description

In the agency’s own words

These campgrounds are tucked away in tall stands of ponderosa pines and white fir that offer shade in the hot summer months. Hiking trails are extensive in this area. At least eight trails can be found within one mile of Pinal and Upper Pinal offering spectacular views. Both Pinal and Upper Pinal sites are located on a site formerly occupied by the US Army that used it as a heliographic signaling (using mirrors to reflect sunlight) station during the late 1800s. Pinal, the larger of the two campgrounds, has 13 camp units and Upper Pinal has 3 units.

Source: USFS Enterprise Data Warehouse · Aug 24, 2026

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
Directions
Every line of the receipt · 3

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.
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

Seen something wrong here? Tell us.

Getting there

the map and the coordinate
Coordinate33.28450, -110.82205

Where it is

Source: USFS Enterprise Data Warehouse · Aug 24, 2026

The weather

the next four days

Next four days, and the thirty-year normal

Forecast

Today50°Mostly Sunny7% rain
Tonight41°Chance Rain Showers35% rain
Sunday54°Chance Rain Showers37% rain
Sunday Night46°Chance Rain Showers30% rain

NWS forecast for El Capitan, AZ

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

The land, and who answers for it

what threatens it · who answers for it

What threatens this place

critical

You’re camping on ground somebody wants. We track the threats and the comment deadlines.

Source: MTJP Threatened Lands map · Oct 5, 2026

Who answers for this land

Eli Crane, official portrait

Pinal & Upper Pinal Campgrounds is in Arizona’s 2nd congressional district. Its representative, Eli Crane (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: Today falls inside 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
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: 0.36 mcd/m² of artificial all-sky glow, ranked against the 262 rated federal campgrounds in Arizona · 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: El Capitan, AZ, 2.3 mi NW (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