South Kawishiwi River
- Right now
- OpenThe agency lists it open
- A night
- $22–$32Across the site types the agency prices
- Sites
- 31All of them booked ahead
- Season
- May 5 – October 21Open May 5 through October 21
The place
the agency’s own description · what’s there · 10 notices
In the agency’s own words
South Kawishiwi River Campground is located in Superior National Forest near the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, about 10 miles from Ely, Minnesota. It offers fishing, boating and other recreational activities in a relaxing outdoor setting. The campground has sites with and without electric hookups, as well as one group day use area great for family picnics, birthday parties and other gatherings of up to 35 people. Keep reading
Recreation
Canoeing is a main attraction. The Kawishiwi River provides access to Birch Lake to the south and the Boundary Waters to the north. When traveling in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wildnerness, a permit is required. Canoe rentals are available by contacting the host. Closer to shore, visitors can enjoy an afternoon of swimming at the campground's grassy beach, hiking the 1-mile Kawishiwi River Forest Trail or trying their luck at fishing for northern pike, perch and walleye. A boat ramp is located on-site. View recreation guides and maps of hiking trails and canoe routes in the national forest.
Facilities
The campground offers individual campsites and one group picnic area that can be reserved for day use. Sites are spacious, private, well-maintained and shaded. Visitors will find vault toilets, drinking water and trash bins within the facility. Firewood is available for purchase.
Natural Features
The scenic Kawishiwi River boasts clear, cold and calm waters lined with boreal forest and wetland ecosystems. Wildlife abounds in Superior National Forest, from moose and bear to bald eagles and loons. The campground lies in a mixed aspen, birch and conifer forest. 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. Contact Info For facility specific information, please call (218) 365-2963.
Nearby Attractions
Numerous outdoor recreation opportunities lie within Superior National Forest's 77 lake accesses, 13 fishing piers, 10 swimming beaches and 22 picnic areas. The forest is also home to three scenic byways. Campers can also explore the nearby Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. Over 1-million acres in size, the Boundary Waters extends nearly 150 miles along the United States-Canada border and 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
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.
Beach and picnic areas open from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. daily.
The South Kawishiwi River Campground holds a pavilion for rent (site 33) that can accommodate up to 26 people. The site also has an outdoor cooking area with a large grill and two picnic tables. See site 33 for more information.
Everything else this campground posts · 7
Off-road and all-terrain vehicles not allowed during camping season.
During the walk-in season please contact the Superior National Forest for information.
Please Note: One towed vehicle per single camping unit will be allowed for no extra charge if it can be parked completely on the surfaced area and does not create a safety hazard. Examples of towed vehicles include a boat trailer or a car towed by a motor home. Two motorcycles are considered one vehicle. Two vehicles per site. RV or trailer counts as first vehicle. Any additional extra vehicles will be charged a per night fee and collected at the campground if you did not pay for the Extra Vehicle Add On.
Reserved Sites will be held until check out time (NOON) the day following your arrival date. Sites must be occupied by the checkout time of that following day to hold a reservation or the site will be forfeited and released to other guests. Once your reservation start date has begun, neither the Recreation.gov Contact Center nor the campground manager will be able to modify your reservation.
Refunds: Refund requests made through www.recreation.gov will be charged a $10 processing fee. This fee is retained by the reservation service contractor along with the non-refundable reservation fee. All requests for the return of the non-refundable reservation fee and the cancellation fee will be declined by the campground concessionaire as they did not receive these fees (these are the fees retained by the reservation contractor, a different entity).
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.
superior Click here to learn more about Superior National Forest.
Tents and rigs
- Sites
- 31
- Hookups
- 23 electric
- Longest rig
- 107 ft
- Accessible sites
- None listed
- Pets
- Allowed
- Campfires
- Allowed, barring fire bans
- Shade
- Every site
Facilities
- Toilets
- Vault Toilets
- “…and shaded. Visitors will find vault toilets, drinking water and trash bins within the facility.…”
- Drinking water
- Yes
- “…Visitors will find vault toilets, drinking water and trash bins within the facility. Firewood is…”
- Boat ramp
- Yes
- Firewood
- Sold here
Around the campground
- On the water
- Lake, River, Beach
- Biking
- Boating
- Fishing
- Hiking
- Hunting
- Swimming
- Wildlife viewing
- Night sky · 42nd darkest of 77 in MN
- Bortle 2
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.
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 · 15
What you actually pay
Derived by CAMPANAC: the agency’s published rates for this season, $22–$32 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 · 5
rules read Sep 9, 2026 · rates Oct 1, 2026 · How we know all this
The sites
33 records · which ones have room · the site map
The sites, ranked
from 32 mapped sitesAll 33 records
The price is derived by CAMPANAC, not published per site: the per-night rate this campground publishes for each site’s own site type. 31 of the 33 sites listed carry one, and a site whose type has no published rate sits out of the price rather than being called free.
| SOUTH KAWISHIWI RIVER | 001 | standard electric | 63 ft | 30 amp | 75 ft | 675 ft | $30–$32 | |
| SOUTH KAWISHIWI RIVER | 002 | standard electric | 57 ft | 30 amp | 75 ft | 611 ft | $30–$32 | |
| SOUTH KAWISHIWI RIVER | 003 | standard electric | 78 ft | 30 amp | 88 ft | 746 ft | $30–$32 | |
| SOUTH KAWISHIWI RIVER | 004 | standard electric | 64 ft | 30 amp | 79 ft | 716 ft | $30–$32 | |
| SOUTH KAWISHIWI RIVER | 005 | standard electric | 62 ft | 50 amp | 78 ft | 807 ft | $30–$32 | |
| SOUTH KAWISHIWI RIVER | 006 | standard electric | 56 ft | 30 amp | 93 ft | 841 ft | $30–$32 | |
| SOUTH KAWISHIWI RIVER | 007 | standard electric | 63 ft | 50 amp | 78 ft | 751 ft | $30–$32 | |
| SOUTH KAWISHIWI RIVER | 008 | standard electric | 65 ft | 50 amp | 66 ft | 762 ft | $30–$32 | |
| SOUTH KAWISHIWI RIVER | 009 | standard electric | 54 ft | 30 amp | 63 ft | 764 ft | $30–$32 | |
| SOUTH KAWISHIWI RIVER | 010 | standard electric | 56 ft | 30 amp | 63 ft | 763 ft | $30–$32 | |
| SOUTH KAWISHIWI RIVER | 011 | standard electric | 60 ft | 30 amp | 80 ft | 834 ft | $30–$32 | |
| SOUTH KAWISHIWI RIVER | 012 | standard electric | 70 ft | 30 amp | 60 ft | 778 ft | $30–$32 | |
| SOUTH KAWISHIWI RIVER | 013 | standard electric | 60 ft | 30 amp | 65 ft | 858 ft | $30–$32 | |
| SOUTH KAWISHIWI RIVER | 014 | standard electric | 58 ft | 30 amp | 60 ft | 800 ft | $30–$32 | |
| SOUTH KAWISHIWI RIVER | 015 | standard nonelectric | 56 ft | 68 ft | 810 ft | $22 | ||
| SOUTH KAWISHIWI RIVER | 016 | standard nonelectric | 59 ft | 72 ft | 796 ft | $22 | ||
| SOUTH KAWISHIWI RIVER | 017 | standard nonelectric | 60 ft | 80 ft | 431 ft | $22 | ||
| SOUTH KAWISHIWI RIVER | 018 | standard nonelectric | 63 ft | 94 ft | 370 ft | $22 | ||
| SOUTH KAWISHIWI RIVER | 019 | standard nonelectric | 60 ft | 125 ft | 783 ft | $22 | ||
| SOUTH KAWISHIWI RIVER | 020 | standard nonelectric | 51 ft | 84 ft | 690 ft | $22 | ||
| SOUTH KAWISHIWI RIVER | 021 | standard electric | 52 ft | 30 amp | 57 ft | 613 ft | $30–$32 | |
| SOUTH KAWISHIWI RIVER | 022 | standard electric | 66 ft | 30 amp | 57 ft | 557 ft | $30–$32 | |
| SOUTH KAWISHIWI RIVER | 023 | standard electric | 59 ft | 30 amp | 80 ft | 468 ft | $30–$32 | |
| SOUTH KAWISHIWI RIVER | 024 | standard nonelectric | 60 ft | 118 ft | 483 ft | $22 | ||
| SOUTH KAWISHIWI RIVER | 025 | standard nonelectric | 107 ft | 30 amp | 118 ft | 491 ft | $22 | |
| SOUTH KAWISHIWI RIVER | 026 | standard electric | 49 ft | 30 amp | 107 ft | 278 ft | $30–$32 | |
| SOUTH KAWISHIWI RIVER | 027 | standard electric | 40 ft | 30 amp | 107 ft | 282 ft | $30–$32 | |
| SOUTH KAWISHIWI RIVER | 028 | standard electric | 71 ft | 30 amp | 102 ft | 345 ft | $30–$32 | |
| SOUTH KAWISHIWI RIVER | 029 | standard electric | 49 ft | 30 amp | 102 ft | 284 ft | $30–$32 | |
| SOUTH KAWISHIWI RIVER | 030 | standard electric | 87 ft | 30 amp | 76 ft | 357 ft | $30–$32 | |
| SOUTH KAWISHIWI RIVER | 031 | standard electric | 88 ft | 30 amp | 76 ft | 328 ft | $30–$32 | |
| SOUTH KAWISHIWI RIVER | 032 HOST | host pad | 73 ft | 375 ft | ||||
| SOUTH KAWISHIWI RIVER | 033 | day use | 15 amp | yes | 362 ft | 250 ft | $170 |
The agency files 2 more records here that aren’t sites for the night: 1 it files as day use and 1 it names a host pad. They’re in the table above, marked for what they are, and none of them is counted as a site.
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.
25 of 33 listed
Getting there
the map and the coordinate · the agency’s directions · the phone number
Where it is
Birch Lake CampgroundSuperior National Forest · 4.7 mi
Fall LakeSuperior National Forest · 9.5 miDumbell Lake Backcountry Campsites14 miT-Lake Backcountry Campsite14 mi
Fenske Lake CampgroundSuperior National Forest · 15 mi
McDougal Lake CampgroundSuperior National Forest · 15 miFrom Ely, Minnesota, travel about 10.3 miles south on State Highway 1 toward Lake Superior. Turn left onto the campground road.
The weather
the next four days · the thirty-year normal
Next four days, and the thirty-year normal
Forecast
NWS forecast for Ely, MN
Typical weather
Typical October night 32°F, day 52°F.
Coldest night of the open season: typical October night 32°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 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
What threatens this place
You’re camping on ground somebody wants. We track the threats and the comment deadlines.
Who answers for this land
South Kawishiwi River 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 →