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U.S. Forest Service · San Bernardino National Forest · CA

South Fork Family Campground

5Heads up5 fires, nearest 20 mi
Wildfire
2026 Training fire · 20 mi away · 0 acres · updated Oct 14, 2026
Wildfire
Mtz/Bdc/83A fire · 21 mi away · 0 acres · updated Oct 15, 2026
Wildfire
Orange 2 fire · 21 mi away · 0 acres · updated Oct 15, 2026
Wildfire
Powerline fire · 22 mi away · 0 acres · updated Oct 14, 2026
Wildfire
Juniper fire · 25 mi away · 0 acres · updated Oct 14, 2026
Fires: NIFC/IRWIN via MTJP wildfire tracker · Oct 15, 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 directionsWhat it costs, and the rules
Right now
Listed not openA database flag with no reason and no date
Drawn from the record · 6,290 ft · 22% tree cover · Santa Ana River within reach · Bortle 4 sky
6,290 ftElevation
160 ftWater · Santa Ana River
3.5 miSW of Big Bear City, CA
22%Tree cover
Bortle 4Night sky · 1098th darkest of 1,201 in CA

The place

the agency’s own description · what’s there

In the agency’s own words

This family campground is located at 6,400' in elevation in a pine/fir forest near the Santa Ana River along Hwy 38 between Angelus Oaks and Big Bear Lake. There are 28 sites. Each site accommodates a maximum of 8 persons. First come/first serve; no reservations accepted. Open during the summer and fall months only.

Source: USFS Enterprise Data Warehouse · Aug 24, 2026

Around the campground

On the water
Lake, River
Source: Stated in the agency description

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 record
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.
Single Site $29 - Holiday $31 - 8 person maximum Camping fee includes entry for 1 vehicle.
Checks under $50 not accepted.
The booking feerecreation.gov
Nothing. This campground takes no bookings, so there’s no reservation fee to pay.
What this campground addsits own record
Extra vehicle$8

“Extra vehicle fee $8 per night.” · the U.S. Forest Service’s own fee record

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 · 5
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
What this campground adds: The U.S. Forest Service’s own fee record and notices for this campground, quoted verbatim. An extra-vehicle charge is set locally and appears on no national schedule, so it’s never assumed. · Aug 24, 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
Coordinate34.16963, -116.82742

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

Tonight50°Partly Cloudy2% rain
Saturday58°Partly Sunny10% rain
Saturday Night47°Mostly Cloudy10% rain
Sunday59°Mostly Sunny4% rain

NWS forecast for Big Bear City, CA

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

Typical weather

Typical October night 35°F, day 63°F.

Coldest month of the year: typical December night 24°F, below freezing. Bring a bag rated colder than that, and expect ice in the water bottle.

90°32°10°

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.

Measured at: BIG BEAR LAKE, CA (USC00040741), 7 miles away and 463 ft higher
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

what threatens it · who answers for it

What threatens this place

Watch
Sand to Snow National Monumentdevelopment · 17 mi
Roadless
Sugarloaf8,206 acres · 2 mi · inventoried roadless area
Roadless
Raywood Flat A41 acres · 8 mi · inventoried roadless area
Roadless
Raywood Flat B11,373 acres · 8 mi · inventoried roadless area

You’re camping on ground somebody wants. We track the threats and the comment deadlines.

Source: MTJP Threatened Lands map · Oct 3, 2026

Who answers for this land

Jay Obernolte, official portrait

South Fork Family Campground is in California’s 23rd congressional district. Its representative, Jay Obernolte (R), votes on the laws that decide what happens to this land. Public-lands grade so far: F. 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: U.S. Forest Service’s own recreation database flags it not open and publishes no reason and no date. That’s a flag, not a notice.
Listed not open: USFS EDW Recreation Opportunities, openstatus field: a not-open flag in a database, with no reason and no date published; read there since Sep 9, 2026. A flag, not a notice, so this page doesn’t call it a closure. · Oct 16, 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: 1.4 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 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