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U.S. Forest Service · Lincoln National Forest · NM

Sam Tobias Memorial Group Campground

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
Shut for nowOutside the published season, our reading
Season
– September 15Closes September 15. No opening date published.
Drawn from the record · 7,000 ft · 33% tree cover · Cedar Creek within reach · Bortle 4 sky
7,000 ftElevation
280 ftWater · Cedar Creek
0.6 miNW of Ruidoso, NM
33%Tree cover
Bortle 4Night sky · 150th darkest of 164 in NM
Closes September 15. No opening date published.Today

The place

the agency’s own description · what’s there

In the agency’s own words

The Group Campground has capacity for up to 100 people for camping or picnicking. All units are wheelchair accessible and have pavilions, picnic tables, campfire pits, grills, water, vault toilets. 3 sites for 60/80/100 people in meadow setting provide popular group activity destination and trails/forest roads for hiking access into adjoining forest Large group facilities only. The campground previous known as Cedar Creek Campground and was renamed in honor of local firefighter, Sam Tobias, who lost his life in the line of duty the summer of 2000.

Source: USFS Enterprise Data Warehouse · Aug 24, 2026

Facilities

Toilets
Vault Toilets
“…tables, campfire pits, grills, water, vault toilets. 3 sites for 60/80/100 people in meadow setting…”
Source: read from the agency description, shown above · Sep 12, 2026

Around the campground

On the water
Creek, Meadow
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 · 6

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.
Night for 1-60 people .$60
Night for 61-80 people .$80
Night for 81-100 people .$100
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
Coordinate33.36158, -105.68520

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

Overnight27°Mostly Clear
Saturday56°Sunny
Saturday Night35°Partly Cloudy1% rain
Sunday62°Sunny3% rain

NWS forecast for Ruidoso, NM

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

Typical weather

Typical September night 44°F, day 75°F.

Coldest night of the open season: typical September night 44°F. Bring the bag rated for it.

90°32°10°

Daily high and lowDays with 0.10 in or moreOutside the published season

A normal is the 1991-2020 average for the month, not a forecast: about half of all Junes are colder than the June line. The seven-day forecast above answers the other question.

Measured at: RUIDOSO, NM (USC00297649), 2 miles away and 70 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

Melanie Stansbury, official portrait

Sam Tobias Memorial Group Campground is in New Mexico’s 1st congressional district. Its representative, Melanie Stansbury (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: Today falls outside 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: 0.42 mcd/m² of artificial all-sky glow, ranked against the 164 rated federal campgrounds in New Mexico · 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 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