Shirley Creek Campground
- Right now
- Nobody has saidNo season, no closure, no bookings to read
- A night
- FreeNo camping fee
- Sites
- 17All of them booked ahead
The place
the agency’s own description · what’s there · 2 notices
In the agency’s own words
Shirley Creek is a primitive campground. There is no use fee at this site. Keep reading
Recreation
Shirley Creek Campground offers access to the Shirley Creek Trail system for horseback riding, mountain bike riding, and hiking Facilities A primitive campground, vault toilets, picnic tables, and hitching racks are available; Water may is seasonally available for livestock (not potable for humans) but bringing water is recommended.
Natural Features
A variety of terrain, scenic hardwoods, and shady trails.
What the agency tells you
All sites are free of charge.
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
- 17
- Hookups
- None
- Accessible sites
- None listed
Facilities
- Toilets
- Vault Toilets
- “…Facilities A primitive campground, vault toilets, picnic tables, and hitching racks are available;…”
- Stay limit
- 28 nights
- recreation.gov facility rule maxStay
Around the campground
- On the water
- Creek
- Backpacking
- Biking
- Hiking
- Horse Camping
- Horseback riding
- Mountain biking
Nothing on the booking system for the next 30 nightsread 15:47 UTC
Every site here is reservable, and the record lists none held back for anyone who drives up.
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.
We make nothing when you book. The link goes straight to the government.
Every line of the receipt · 12
What you actually pay
Derived by CAMPANAC: the agency’s own record says there’s no camping fee, 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 · 5
recreation.gov availability, read 15:47 UTC · rules read Sep 9, 2026 · rates Sep 10, 2026 · How we know all this
The sites
17 sites · which ones have room · the site map
The sites, ranked
from 17 mapped sitesAll 17 sites
Measured shade is NLCD Tree Canopy Cover 2024 (USDA Forest Service / MRLC) read at the site’s own coordinate, 27% canopy or more, and only for the sites the agency gave no Shade value. It never changes the agency’s own shaded count beside it.
| 1 | standard nonelectric | 145 ft | 1,386 ft |
| 10 | standard nonelectric | 69 ft | 1,139 ft |
| 11 | standard nonelectric | 69 ft | 1,070 ft |
| 12 | standard nonelectric | 56 ft | 1,136 ft |
| 13 | standard nonelectric | 56 ft | 1,084 ft |
| 14 | standard nonelectric | 65 ft | 1,140 ft |
| 15 | standard nonelectric | 64 ft | 1,106 ft |
| 16 | standard nonelectric | 64 ft | 1,151 ft |
| 17 | standard nonelectric | 80 ft | 1,230 ft |
| 2 | standard nonelectric | 105 ft | 1,244 ft |
| 3 | standard nonelectric | 78 ft | 1,348 ft |
| 4 | standard nonelectric | 78 ft | 1,290 ft |
| 5 | standard nonelectric | 72 ft | 1,209 ft |
| 6 | standard nonelectric | 64 ft | 1,215 ft |
| 7 | standard nonelectric | 64 ft | 1,156 ft |
| 8 | standard nonelectric | 70 ft | 1,224 ft |
| 9 | standard nonelectric | 70 ft | 1,183 ft |
OpenStreetMap has no toilet mapped within 1 km of this campground, so no site here carries a toilet distance. That’s a gap in the map, not a finding about the campground.
Getting there
the map and the coordinate · the phone number
Where it is
The weather
the next four days · the thirty-year normal
Next four days, and the thirty-year normal
Forecast
NWS forecast for Prospect, IN
Typical weather
Typical October night 42°F, day 68°F.
Coldest month of the year: typical January night 21°F, below freezing. Bring a bag rated colder than that, and expect ice in the water bottle.
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.
The land, and who answers for it
who answers for it
Who answers for this land
Shirley Creek Campground is in Indiana’s 8th congressional district. Its representative, Mark Messmer (R), votes on the laws that decide what happens to this land. Public-lands grade so far: F. See every public-lands vote →