CAMPANAC.Powered by public lands intelligenceMore Than Just Parks
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U.S. Forest Service · CO

Rio Grande Off-Season Campgrounds

ReservableBooking 6 months out; today unlocks April 28. Season not published.
Book on recreation.govWe make nothing when you book
Right now
Nobody has saidNo season, no closure, no bookings to read
Sites
6All of them booked ahead

The place

the agency’s own description · what’s there

In the agency’s own words

All sites are first come, first served and cannot be reserved. No trash service or receptacles. Please pack out all garbage. Open year-round, but may be inaccessible due to winter conditions or spring road closures. These campgrounds are Forest Service run from approximately mid-September through mid-May and concessionaire run mid-May through mid-September. Contact Info For facility specific information, please call (719) 657-3321.

Source: Recreation.gov data (RIDB), full extract · Oct 28, 2026

Tents and rigs

Sites
6
Hookups
None
Accessible sites
None listed
Source: Recreation.gov campsite records · Oct 28, 2026

Facilities

Store
Nearby
Source: Stated in the agency description · Oct 28, 2026

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.

Booking window6 months outBooking opens 6 months ahead; today unlocks arrivals through April 28, 2027. The agency publishes no reservable season in the record we hold, so the window may close earlier than that.recreation.gov
If plans change$10 to cancel$10 to change a reservationrecreation.gov’s schedule
Runs itU.S. Forest ServiceBooked through recreation.govthe agency’s record
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.

Free forever, no booking kickbacks.
Book on recreation.gov

We make nothing when you book. The link goes straight to the government.

Every line of the receipt · 9

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
Reservation fee, booked online$8
One fee per reservation, however many nights you book, and it’s non-refundable. $9 if you book by phone, $3 in person.
Pass discounts only apply to the recreation (or use) fee for the facility. Other charges such as electricity or water hookups, reservation or other fees are not eligible for a discount.
What a stay costs
The agency publishes no nightly rate for this campground, so there’s nothing to add the $8 booking fee to. We won’t total a receipt with a number missing from it.
If your plans changerecreation.gov
Change fee, moving to dates outside your booking$10
Cancellation fee$10
Cancelling the day before, or the day of$10 + your first night
No-show$20 + your first night

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
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 · Oct 28, 2026

record Oct 28, 2026 · How we know all this

Seen something wrong here? Tell us.

The sites

6 sites

All 6 sites

PALISADELost Trail Campgroundstandard nonelectric
PALISADELower Beaver Campgroundstandard nonelectric
PALISADEPalisade Campgroundstandard nonelectric
PALISADERoad Canyon Campgroundstandard nonelectric
PALISADESilver Thread Campgroundstandard nonelectric
PALISADEThirty Mile Campgroundstandard nonelectric
Source: Recreation.gov data (RIDB), full extract · Oct 28, 2026

Getting there

The agency’s pageOfficial page ↗

The weather

Next four days, and the thirty-year normal

The land, and who answers for it

How we know

every fact on this page, and where it came from
Right now: U.S. Forest 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.
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.