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Bureau of Land Management · Rawlins Field Office · WY

Prior Flat Campground

1Heads up1 fire 11 mi away
Wildfire
Chalk Mountain fire · 11 mi away · 124 acres · 91% contained · updated Oct 6, 2026
Fires: NIFC/IRWIN via MTJP wildfire tracker · Oct 6, 2026
First come, first servedNo reservation, and none to be had: the sites go to whoever pulls in first.

This is how it should work.

Get directions
Right now
Nobody has saidNo season, no closure, no bookings to read
Drawn from the record · 7,730 ft · 0% tree cover · Muddy Creek within reach · Bortle 2 sky
7,730 ftElevation
4,229 ftWater · Muddy Creek
36.8 miSW of Casper, WY
0%Tree cover
Bortle 2Night sky · 74th darkest of 248 in WY

The place

the agency’s own description · what’s there

In the agency’s own words

The Prior Flat Campground has 15 campsites and a vault toilet on about 9 acres. It has one pull-through, picnic tables, fire rings/grills and parking spurs. Typical use season is from June 1st through November 15th because the roads become impassable after heavy rain and snow melt. No horses allowed in campground. The campground is located at the foot of the Shirley Mountains, a remote range in a large basin between the Medicine Bow and the Ferris Mountains. Visitors will enjoy the aspen, limber pine, lodgepole pine, big sagebrush and can view pronghorn, mule deer, elk, coyotes, grouse and golden eagles.

Source: Recreation.gov data (RIDB), full extract · Aug 23, 2026

Facilities

Toilets
Vault Toilets
“…Flat Campground has 15 campsites and a vault toilet on about 9 acres. It has one pull-through, picnic…”
Source: read from the agency description, shown above · Sep 12, 2026

Around the campground

Biking
Camping Area
Fishing
Hiking
Wildlife viewing
Source: Recreation.gov activity records · Aug 23, 2026

Nothing to book, just show up

One of 1,623 federal campgrounds where the site still goes to whoever pulls in first. Get there before noon on a summer weekend.

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.

BookingNo reservationsNothing to book, and no release date to wait forthe agency’s record
Runs itBureau of Land Managementthe agency’s record
Directions
Every line of the receipt · 3

What you actually pay

The sign priceBureau of Land Management
The Bureau of Land Management 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
Nothing. This campground takes no bookings, so there’s no reservation fee to pay.
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: Recreation.gov data (RIDB), full extract · Aug 23, 2026

rules read Sep 7, 2026 · record Aug 23, 2026 · How we know all this

Seen something wrong here? Tell us.

Getting there

the map and the coordinate · the phone number
Coordinate42.24194, -106.58625
The phone307-328-4200

Where it is

Source: Recreation.gov data (RIDB), full extract · Aug 23, 2026

The weather

the next four days · the thirty-year normal

Next four days, and the thirty-year normal

Forecast

This Afternoon57°Sunny
Tonight41°Clear
Sunday56°Sunny
Sunday Night40°Partly Cloudy3% rain

NWS forecast for Alcova, WY

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

Typical weather

Typical October night 23°F, day 54°F.

Coldest month of the year: typical January night 1°F, below freezing. Bring a bag rated colder than that, and expect ice in the water bottle.

90°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: SHIRLEY BASIN, WY (USC00488192), 26 miles away and 673 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

who answers for it

Who answers for this land

Harriet Hageman, official portrait

Prior Flat Campground is in Wyoming’s at-large congressional district. Its representative, Harriet Hageman (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: Bureau of Land Management publishes no season and no closure for this campground, and it takes no bookings we can read. That’s a gap in the record and not a locked gate: the number below is the only way to be sure.
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: 0.026 mcd/m² of artificial all-sky glow, ranked against the 248 rated federal campgrounds in Wyoming · 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 BLM’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: Alcova, WY, 22.1 mi SSE (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