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The map
U.S. Forest Service · Mark Twain National Forest · MO

Pinewoods Lake Recreation Area

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 directionsWhat it costs, and the rules
Right now
OpenThe agency lists it open
Season
January 1 – December 31Open January 1 through December 31
Drawn from the record · 830 ft · 57% tree cover · Pinewoods Lake within reach · Bortle 4 sky
830 ftElevation
902 ftWater · Pinewoods Lake
13.6 miSE of Van Buren, MO
57%Tree cover
Bortle 4Night sky · 58th darkest of 118 in MO
Open January 1 through December 31Today

The place

the agency’s own description · what’s there

In the agency’s own words

Next to the 31-acre Pinewoods Lake visitors can experience the quiet, calm of the Pinewoods Lake Recreation Area. Spend an afternoon exploring along the 1.3-mile walking trail around the lake, catching site of woodducks and beavers. Anglers can spend a quiet day on the lake looking for the perfect bass, sunfish or catfish. For those who prefer firm ground to boats, an accessible , floating fishing pier is available. The dense woods that surround the lake and recreation area offer visitors a sense of seclusion and privacy amidst the oak, hickory and pine trees.

Source: USFS Enterprise Data Warehouse · Aug 24, 2026

Around the campground

On the water
Lake
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
Directions
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.
Day Use Fee Group Picnic Area Pavilion: $50/day (74 people) Parking is free of charge Camping Single - $15/night Double - $25/night
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
Coordinate36.92235, -90.77362

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

Overnight40°Partly Cloudy
Saturday61°Sunny
Saturday Night34°Clear then Areas Of Frost
Sunday65°Areas Of Frost then Sunny

NWS forecast for Ellsinore, MO

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

Typical weather

Typical October night 45°F, day 70°F.

Coldest month of the year: typical January night 23°F, below freezing. Bring a bag rated colder than that, and expect ice in the water bottle.

100°32°10°

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.

Measured at: CLEARWATER DAM, MO (USC00231674), 15 miles away and 170 ft lower
Source: NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, U.S. Climate Normals 1991-2020, monthly normals · Sep 8, 2026

The land, and who answers for it

what threatens it · who answers for it

What threatens this place

critical
Mark Twain National Foresttransfer, logging, mining

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

Source: MTJP Threatened Lands map · Oct 3, 2026

Who answers for this land

Jason Smith, official portrait

Pinewoods Lake Recreation Area is in Missouri’s 8th congressional district. Its representative, Jason Smith (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: The agency lists it open right now.
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: 0.29 mcd/m² of artificial all-sky glow, ranked against the 118 rated federal campgrounds in Missouri · 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: Ellsinore, MO, 0.6 mi WSW. 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