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National Park Service · Channel Islands National Park · CA

Prisoners Harbor Campground

4Heads up2 park alerts · 2 fires, nearest 41 mi
Wildfire
Cornell fire · 41 mi away · updated Oct 15, 2026
Wildfire
Bryson fire · 49 mi away · 146 acres · 39% contained · updated Oct 17, 2026
Park Closure
Parts of Santa Rosa Island Closed During Wildfire Recovery Burned areas on Santa Rosa Island remain closed. Backcountry beach camping in Southeast Quadrant will remain closed for the remainder of the 2026 recreation season. Click the more link for additional information.
Information
Santa Barbara Island Dock Closed; Landings Restricted to Adjacent Rocky Ledge Santa Barbara Island is open to public access, but landings are restricted to the rocky ledge adjacent to the dock. The dock is closed and is not expected to be repaired in the near future due to the severe winter storm damage.
Fires: NIFC/IRWIN via MTJP wildfire tracker · Oct 17, 2026
Alerts: National Park Service alerts API · Oct 17, 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 · 70 ft · 33% tree cover · the coast within reach · Bortle 3 sky
70 ftElevation
7.6 miWater · an unnamed streamOcean · 923 ft · to the Pacific Ocean
23.1 miS of Santa Barbara, CA
33%Tree cover
Bortle 3Night sky · 698th darkest of 1,201 in CA

The place

the agency’s own description · what’s there

In the agency’s own words

This campground is under construction and expected to open in 2026. Reservations required. Four-person limit per site. Each site contains a tent pad, picnic table, food storage box. One site is larger and has a ramp to the tent pad and an ADA-accessible picnic table. The path to this site from the pier is not ADA-accessible. There is an ADA-accessible vault toilet in the campground. No water is available. Distance from the pier to the campground is one-third of a mile.

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

Facilities

Toilets
Vault Toilets - year round
Drinking water
None, bring your own
Source: National Park Service and agency records
Official page →

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 itNational Park Servicethe agency’s record
Directions
Every line of the receipt · 3

What you actually pay

The sign priceNational Park Service
The National Park 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
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

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Getting there

the map and the coordinate
Coordinate34.01734, -119.68149
The agency’s pageOfficial page ↗

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

Today86°Sunny
Tonight64°Mostly Clear
Sunday79°Sunny
Sunday Night59°Mostly Clear

NWS forecast for Santa Barbara, CA

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

Typical weather

Typical October night 56°F, day 76°F.

90°40°

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.

Measured at: SANTA BARBARA, CA (USC00047902), 28 miles away and 54 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

Salud Carbajal, official portrait

Prisoners Harbor Campground is in California’s 24th congressional district. Its representative, Salud Carbajal (D), votes on the laws that decide what happens to this land. Public-lands grade so far: A. 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: National Park Service 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.
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: 0.2 mcd/m² of artificial all-sky glow, ranked against the 1,201 rated federal campgrounds in California · 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 Park 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 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