Sawbill Lake Campground - Superior National Forest
- Right now
- OpenThe agency lists it open
- A night
- $20From, per site
- Sites
- 5350 on recreation.gov
- Season
- May 12 – October 21Open May 12 through October 21
The place
the agency’s own description · what’s there · 6 notices
In the agency’s own words
Sawbill Lake Campground has immediate access to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, a beautiful, peaceful and wild natural feature of Minnesota's Superior National Forest. The campground acts as a convenient base camp for exploring the nearby wilderness. Superior National Forest, located in northeastern Minnesota's Arrowhead Region, is comprised of 3 million acres. The forest spans 150 miles along the United States-Canada border. Visitors can find recreation opportunities year-round, including travel in the famed Boundary Waters. Keep reading
Recreation
This facility draws canoe enthusiasts who seek a quiet and convenient area from which to access the surrounding wilderness. Day and overnight use of the Boundary Waters requires a permit. The campground concessionaire, Sawbill Canoe Outfitters, provides a one-stop shop for canoeists of all levels within walking distance of the campground. Canoe rentals, permits and guided canoe trips are available. Campers who wish to spend time relaxing at the campground can fish for northern pike and bass; hike, bike, picnic and attend educational programs. View recreation guides and maps of hiking trails and canoe routes in the national forest.
Facilities
Sawbill Lake is comprised of two loops with a total of 51 campsites, 27 of which can be reserved (others are first-come, first-served). Campsites can easily accommodate large motorhomes and RVs. Some of the sites offer a partial lake view through the forest. The campground is equipped with picnic tables and campfire rings with grills, as well as vault toilets, a dump station, drinking water and trash and recycling bins.
Natural Features
Sawbill Lake is nestled in a thick pine forest that gives campsites excellent privacy. Birds and wildlife are abundant, from moose and bear to bald eagles and loons. Wildflowers add bright colors to the landscape in warmer months. The campground sits on a hill above Sawbill Lake. The 765-acre lake is within the Boundary Waters.
Nearby Attractions
Sawbill Canoe Outfitters maintains a store with showers, laundry, fishing licenses, bait and tackle, ice, grocery and convenience items, canoe and camping gear, rentals and a pay telephone. Over 1 million acres in size, the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness contains over 1,200 miles of canoe routes, 12 hiking trails and over 2,000 designated campsites. Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness Additional sites of interest
What the agency tells you
Limit of two vehicles per campsite, not including trailers; $10 fee for second vehicle. Extra vehicle can be paid online in advance or in person onsite. If paid onsite, you won't be charged the $2 add-on fee; free public parking lot is also available onsite near the campground
Check-in / Check-out time is 12:00pm (noon)
Traveling within the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness requires a permit; day use requires a self-issued permit; overnight use requires a permit from the quota system
Everything else this campground posts · 3
Be bear aware; keep all food out of site in approved containers or locked inside a hard-sided vehicle and remove all food from area after eating
Superior National Forest website
Don't move firewood: To limit the spread of invasive tree-killing pests, firewood from outside the area is not permitted. Some states have quarantines and may confiscate your firewood. Please help protect our forests from invasive species by obtaining your firewood at or near your camping destination and burning it on-site. Visit dontmovefirewood.org for more information.
Tents and rigs
- Sites
- 53
- Hookups
- None
- Longest rig
- 45 ft
- Accessible sites
- 7
- Pets
- Allowed
- Campfires
- Allowed, barring fire bans
- Shade
- 26 of 53 sites
Facilities
- Toilets
- Vault Toilets
- VAULT TOILETS on 18 of 53 campsite records
- Showers
- Yes, the record doesn’t say what kind
- SHOWERS on 18 of 53 campsite records
- Drinking water
- Yes
- DRINKING WATER on 18 of 53 campsite records
- Dump station
- Yes
- recreation.gov lists “Dump Station”
- Store
- Nearby
- Camp host
- On site
- recreation.gov lists “Host”
Around the campground
- On the water
- Lake
- Biking
- Boating
- Fishing
- Hiking
- Hunting
- Ranger programs
- Other Recreation Concession Site
- Wildlife viewing
- Night sky · 5th darkest of 77 in MN
- Bortle 1
Nothing on the booking system for the next 30 nightsread 16:14 UTC
recreation.gov lists 50 of the 53 campsites the agency files here. The rest aren’t on its booking system, so a reservation won’t get you one.
Every one of the next thirty nights is in recreation.gov’s record and not one site is being offered on any of them. That’s a campground closed or not yet released for booking, not a sold-out one.
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.
Tell me when the season opens
Watch for the season to open
One email when the season goes on sale, plus More Than Just Parks dispatches. Unsubscribe any time.
We check once an hour, at 40 minutes past, and write the first time the agency has that season on sale.
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.
We make nothing when you book. The link goes straight to the government.
Every line of the receipt · 14
What you actually pay
“$10 fee for second vehicle.” · the U.S. Forest Service’s own agency notice
Derived by CAMPANAC: the agency’s published rate for this season, $20 a night, plus one $8 recreation.gov reservation fee for the booking. A weekend here means Friday and Saturday night, booked once. Optional charges (an extra vehicle, a second tent, a dump-station fee) are listed separately and aren’t in this total.
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 · 6
recreation.gov availability, read 16:14 UTC · rules read Sep 9, 2026 · rates Oct 1, 2026 · How we know all this
The sites
53 sites · which ones have room · the site map
The sites, ranked
from 24 mapped sitesAll 53 sites
Toilet distances are OpenStreetMap’s, measured for 27 of the 53 sites listed. A site with no reading is unknown, never far.
The price is derived by CAMPANAC, not published per site: the per-night rate this campground publishes for each site’s own site type. 48 of the 53 sites listed carry one, and a site whose type has no published rate sits out of the price rather than being called free.
| Sawbill Lake Campground - Superior National Forest | 001 | type not stated | 20 ft | 134 ft | 170 ft | |||
| Sawbill Lake Campground - Superior National Forest | 002 | standard nonelectric | 20 ft | 26 ft | 154 ft | 101 ft | $20 | |
| Sawbill Lake Campground - Superior National Forest | 003 | standard nonelectric | 45 ft | 26 ft | 176 ft | 76 ft | $20 | |
| Sawbill Lake Campground - Superior National Forest | 004 | standard nonelectric | 25 ft | $20 | ||||
| Sawbill Lake Campground - Superior National Forest | 005 | standard nonelectric | 45 ft | 122 ft | 177 ft | 91 ft | $20 | |
| Sawbill Lake Campground - Superior National Forest | 006 | standard nonelectric | 25 ft | Outhouse +1 listed | $20 | |||
| Sawbill Lake Campground - Superior National Forest | 007 | standard nonelectric | 45 ft | 49 ft | 258 ft | 291 ft | $20 | |
| Sawbill Lake Campground - Superior National Forest | 008 | standard nonelectric | 25 ft | 49 ft | 209 ft | 303 ft | $20 | |
| Sawbill Lake Campground - Superior National Forest | 009 | standard nonelectric | 25 ft | Outhouse +1 listed | $20 | |||
| Sawbill Lake Campground - Superior National Forest | 010 | standard nonelectric | 25 ft | Outhouse +1 listed | $20 | |||
| Sawbill Lake Campground - Superior National Forest | 011 | standard nonelectric | 25 ft | 151 ft | 254 ft | 292 ft | $20 | |
| Sawbill Lake Campground - Superior National Forest | 012 | standard nonelectric | 45 ft | 50 ft | 206 ft | 343 ft | $20 | |
| Sawbill Lake Campground - Superior National Forest | 013 | standard nonelectric | 25 ft | yes | 50 ft | 255 ft | 316 ft | $20 |
| Sawbill Lake Campground - Superior National Forest | 014 | standard nonelectric | 25 ft | Outhouse +1 listed | $20 | |||
| Sawbill Lake Campground - Superior National Forest | 015 | standard nonelectric | 45 ft | yes | 134 ft | 261 ft | 181 ft | $20 |
| Sawbill Lake Campground - Superior National Forest | 017 | standard nonelectric | 25 ft | Outhouse +1 listed | $20 | |||
| Sawbill Lake Campground - Superior National Forest | 018 | standard nonelectric | 20 ft | yes | 156 ft | 196 ft | 76 ft | $20 |
| Sawbill Lake Campground - Superior National Forest | 019 | standard nonelectric | 25 ft | Outhouse +1 listed | $20 | |||
| Sawbill Lake Campground - Superior National Forest | 020 | standard nonelectric | 25 ft | yes | 81 ft | 237 ft | 126 ft | $20 |
| Sawbill Lake Campground - Superior National Forest | 021 | standard nonelectric | 45 ft | yes | 81 ft | 230 ft | 203 ft | $20 |
| Sawbill Lake Campground - Superior National Forest | 022 | standard nonelectric | 25 ft | Outhouse +1 listed | $20 | |||
| Sawbill Lake Campground - Superior National Forest | 023 | standard nonelectric | 25 ft | Outhouse +1 listed | $20 | |||
| Sawbill Lake Campground - Superior National Forest | 024 | standard nonelectric | 25 ft | $20 | ||||
| Sawbill Lake Campground - Superior National Forest | 025 | standard nonelectric | 25 ft | Outhouse +1 listed | $20 | |||
| Sawbill Lake Campground - Superior National Forest | 026 | standard nonelectric | 20 ft | 86 ft | 340 ft | 451 ft | $20 | |
| Sawbill Lake Campground - Superior National Forest | 027 | standard nonelectric | 45 ft | 86 ft | 365 ft | 470 ft | $20 | |
| Sawbill Lake Campground - Superior National Forest | 028 | standard nonelectric | 45 ft | 206 ft | 441 ft | 602 ft | $20 | |
| Sawbill Lake Campground - Superior National Forest | 029 | standard nonelectric | 25 ft | Outhouse +1 listed | $20 | |||
| Sawbill Lake Campground - Superior National Forest | 030 | standard nonelectric | 20 ft | 80 ft | 443 ft | 256 ft | $20 | |
| Sawbill Lake Campground - Superior National Forest | 031 | standard nonelectric | 30 ft | 80 ft | 512 ft | 216 ft | $20 | |
| Sawbill Lake Campground - Superior National Forest | 032 | standard nonelectric | 25 ft | Outhouse +1 listed | $20 | |||
| Sawbill Lake Campground - Superior National Forest | 033 | standard nonelectric | 30 ft | 105 ft | 539 ft | 127 ft | $20 | |
| Sawbill Lake Campground - Superior National Forest | 034 | standard nonelectric | 25 ft | Outhouse +1 listed | $20 | |||
| Sawbill Lake Campground - Superior National Forest | 035 | standard nonelectric | 20 ft | 80 ft | 560 ft | 78 ft | $20 | |
| Sawbill Lake Campground - Superior National Forest | 036 | standard nonelectric | 30 ft | 80 ft | 486 ft | 80 ft | $20 | |
| Sawbill Lake Campground - Superior National Forest | 037 | standard nonelectric | 25 ft | Outhouse +1 listed | $20 | |||
| Sawbill Lake Campground - Superior National Forest | 038 | standard nonelectric | 30 ft | 112 ft | 464 ft | 192 ft | $20 | |
| Sawbill Lake Campground - Superior National Forest | 039 | standard nonelectric | 25 ft | Outhouse +1 listed | $20 | |||
| Sawbill Lake Campground - Superior National Forest | 040 | standard nonelectric | 20 ft | 120 ft | 470 ft | 287 ft | $20 | |
| Sawbill Lake Campground - Superior National Forest | 041 | standard nonelectric | 45 ft | 171 ft | 661 ft | 297 ft | $20 | |
| Sawbill Lake Campground - Superior National Forest | 042 | standard nonelectric | 25 ft | $20 | ||||
| Sawbill Lake Campground - Superior National Forest | 043 | standard nonelectric | 25 ft | 133 ft | 541 ft | 163 ft | $20 | |
| Sawbill Lake Campground - Superior National Forest | 044 | standard nonelectric | 25 ft | $20 | ||||
| Sawbill Lake Campground - Superior National Forest | 045 | standard nonelectric | 25 ft | Outhouse +1 listed | $20 | |||
| Sawbill Lake Campground - Superior National Forest | 046 | standard nonelectric | 25 ft | Outhouse +1 listed | $20 | |||
| Sawbill Lake Campground - Superior National Forest | 047 | standard nonelectric | 25 ft | $20 | ||||
| Sawbill Lake Campground - Superior National Forest | 048 | standard nonelectric | 25 ft | $20 | ||||
| Sawbill Lake Campground - Superior National Forest | 049 | standard nonelectric | 25 ft | Outhouse +1 listed | $20 | |||
| Sawbill Lake Campground - Superior National Forest | 050 | standard nonelectric | 25 ft | Outhouse +1 listed | $20 | |||
| Sawbill Lake Campground - Superior National Forest | Day Use 1 | type not stated | ||||||
| Sawbill Lake Campground - Superior National Forest | Day Use 2 | type not stated | 25 ft | |||||
| Sawbill Lake Campground - Superior National Forest | H1 | type not stated | 25 ft | yes | 253 ftSawbill Creek | 853 ft | ||
| Sawbill Lake Campground - Superior National Forest | H2 | type not stated | 25 ft | yes | 191 ft | 787 ft |
25 of 53 listed
Getting there
the map and the coordinate · the agency’s directions · the phone number
Where it is
Crescent Lake (MN)5.5 miCrescent Lake Campground & Backcountry SitesSuperior National Forest · 5.6 miClara Lake Rustic CampgroundSuperior National Forest · 8.7 miPoplar River Rustic CampgroundSuperior National Forest · 10 mi
Temperance River CampgroundSuperior National Forest · 10 miThe campground is located north of Tofte, Minnesota. Travel to Tofte via Highway 61 along Lake Superior's north shore. In Tofte, turn north (away from Lake Superior) on Sawbill Trail (CCHS 2). Follow Sawbill Trail 24 miles until it ends at the entrance to the campground.
The weather
the next four days · the thirty-year normal
Next four days, and the thirty-year normal
Forecast
NWS forecast for Lutsen, MN
Typical weather
Typical October night 33°F, day 49°F.
Coldest night of the open season: typical October night 33°F. Bring the bag rated for it.
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 Julys are colder than the July line. The seven-day forecast above answers the other question.
The land, and who answers for it
what threatens it · who answers for it
Roadless country, and what’s coming for it
You’re camping on ground somebody wants. We track the threats and the comment deadlines.
Who answers for this land
Sawbill Lake Campground - Superior National Forest is in Minnesota’s 8th congressional district. Its representative, Pete Stauber (R), votes on the laws that decide what happens to this land. Public-lands grade so far: F. See every public-lands vote →