Starrigavan Creek Cabin
We don’t think it should be. Every campground should hold some sites for whoever drives up.Tell your representative →
- Right now
- Taking bookingsSites offered on 30 of the next 30 nights read 16:24 UTC
- Sites
- 1All of them booked ahead
The place
the agency’s own description · what’s there · 14 notices
In the agency’s own words
Starrigavan Creek Cabin is a drive-up, high-use, seasonally accessible log cabin within the Starrigavan Recreation Area. The cabin was constructed in 2008 from young Sitka spruce trees harvested around Starrigavan Creek to improve wildlife and fish habitat. The cabin is an experiment in the longevity of young spruce logs for construction purposes, making it the first young-growth cabin and also the first cabin within a recreation area in the Tongass National Forest. Access to Sitka is only by ferry or airplane. The cabin is a two-minute drive from the Alaska Marine Highway Sitka Ferry Terminal or a 7-mile drive from downtown Sitka or the airport. Visitors are responsible for their own travel arrangements and safety, and must bring some of their own amenities. Keep reading
Recreation
Starrigavan offers saltwater and freshwater fishing opportunities. Visitors also enjoy kayaking, photography, hiking and birding. Hiking options include the Estuary Life Trail, Forest and Muskeg Trail, Mosquito Cove Trail and numerous intertwining paths and roadways within the recreation area. For information about fishing permits and seasons, visit the Alaska Department of Fish and Game website.
Facilities
The popular cabin is equipped with beds for six adults, but can accommodate a maximum of eight people if younger children are involved. The cabin is available solely for overnight camping. See restrictions on maximum number of persons below. The main level of the cabin has one single bunk over an accessible bunk, a table with benches, a wood stove for heat, a cooking counter, a broom and dustpan. A stairway leads to the upstairs sleeping loft, which offers two double-size bunks, a table, two chairs and a lamp table. The cabin does not have electricity or indoor plumbing. A bench overlooks Starrigavan Creek. A picnic table and a combination campfire ring/grill with log benches are provided outside. A vault toilet is located 200 feet from the cabin; artesian well water is 300 feet from the cabin. Parking space is provided for up to four standard vehicles. Visitors must bring sleeping bags and pads, garbage bags, matches, fire starter, a tablecloth to protect cedar tabletop, a cooking stove, pots, pans, food and coolers, eating and cooking utensils, lanterns and flashlights (candles are discouraged). This is a locked cabin that requires visitors to pre-arrange access. See “Need to Know” section for details of cabin and gate access. Click here for more cabin information.
Natural Features
The cabin is situated next to Starrigavan Creek and is surrounded by a temperate rainforest of hemlock and spruce trees with salmonberry bushes, low shrubs and mosses covering the forest floor. The cabin occupies an old campsite and is located within the major camping loop of Starrigavan Recreation Area. Starrigavan Recreation Area houses a diverse range of forest, estuary and marine habitats. Depending on the season, visitors may view brown bear, spawning coho and pink salmon, common merganser, bald eagle, great blue heron, bufflehead, kingfisher, river otter or Sitka black-tailed deer. Brown bear frequent the area.
What the agency tells you
Cabin is locked; requires pre-arranging access. Contact the Starrigavan Recreation Area Host (907-747-5720) at least two business days in advance of your cabin stay to communicate a check-in time for your arrival (earliest check-in time is 2 p.m.). During this initial communication, you may request authorization to allow an alternate individual to make the check-in.
Customers should plan on checking in at the Starrigavan Host cabin the day of the reservation before proceeding to the rental cabin.
Photo ID may be required at check-in; combination to cabin doors is given only to the person listed on the reservation unless an alternate individual has been prearranged with Ranger District staff in advance.
Everything else this campground posts · 11
Earliest arrival time at the cabin is 2 p.m.; latest departure time is 12 p.m. (noon).
To minimize impacts to this recreation site, eight people is the maximum number allowed at cabin/cabin site at one time. Person count includes visitors not camping overnight. Keep this in mind if planning parties where number of visitors is unknown or exceeds eight. Contact Sitka Ranger District as listed above for a possible alternative.
Adjacent campsites not available for use by those with cabin reservations.
Tents, RVs, buses, trailers, motor homes, pickup campers, travel trailers and commercial vehicles are not allowed at this site.
Firewood not included with cabin reservation; bring your own firewood (maximum length 15 inches) for heating stove or request firewood when pre-arranging access with Ranger District staff.
Starrigavan has an active brown bear population; be prepared to keep all food and drinks in the cabin unless actively eating outside at the fire ring, or store in vehicle at night.
Dogs must be leashed at all times on the cabin site and within Starrigavan Recreation Area, cannot be left alone within the cabin and cannot be tied up outside the cabin.
Vehicles must be parked within the designated cabin parking spur. Parking is not permitted along the roadway or in adjacent campsites.
Vehicle access varies throughout the year depending on daylight hours. Summer open gate hours are generally 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. and 7 a.m. to 8 p.m starting in late August as the daylight hours diminish. Please call the Sitka Ranger District (907-747-6671) for questions about gate hours.
Vehicle access during the winter will depend on the presence of snow/ice on roadway and winter host availability for managing gates; check with the Sitka Ranger District (907-747-6671) for current conditions. When access gates are closed, customer equipment/supplies must be packed in by non-motorized means; parking is available off highway near the entrance to the recreation area.
Learn more about Tongass National Forest
Tents and rigs
- Sites
- 1 · 1 cabin
- Hookups
- None
- Longest rig
- 15 ft
- Accessible sites
- 1
- Pets
- Allowed
- Campfires
- Allowed, barring fire bans
- Shade
- Every site
Facilities
- Toilets
- Vault Toilets
- “…with log benches are provided outside. A vault toilet is located 200 feet from the cabin; artesian well…”
- Drinking water
- Yes
- “…200 feet from the cabin; artesian well water is 300 feet from the cabin. Parking space is…”
- Stay limit
- 7 nights
- recreation.gov facility rule maxStay
Around the campground
- On the water
- River, Creek
- Biking
- Boating
- Fishing
- Hiking
- Wildlife viewing
- Night sky · 238th darkest of 280 in AK
- Bortle 3
Full this Saturdayread 16:24 UTC
How full the weekend is nationally.
OpenBooked
The one site on offer is taken this Friday and Saturday. 1 is free on Mon, Oct 19. read 16:24 UTC Why the weekend fills and the week doesn’t
Watch for a cancellation
Watch this campground
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
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 16:24 UTC · rules read Sep 9, 2026 · rates Oct 1, 2026 · How we know all this
The sites
1 sites · the site map
All 1 sites
Toilet distances are OpenStreetMap’s, measured for 1 of the 1 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. 1 of the 1 sites listed carry one, and a site whose type has no published rate sits out of the price rather than being called free.
| Estuary Loop | CABIN | cabin nonelectric | 15 ft | yes | 189 ft | 1,153 ft | $75 |
Getting there
the map and the coordinate · the agency’s directions · the phone number
Where it is
Starrigavan Campground and Day UseTongass National Forest · 0.3 miSawmill Creek CampgroundTongass National Forest · 7.5 mi
Brents Beach CabinTongass National Forest · 7.7 mi
Allan Point CabinTongass National Forest · 7.9 mi
Freds Creek CabinTongass National Forest · 10 mi
Samsing Cove CabinTongass National Forest · 10 miLocated 7 miles northeast of Sitka at the end of Halibut Point Road, about 3/4 mile from the local Alaska Marine Highway ferry terminal. There are no roads to Sitka.
Access is via the Alaska Marine Highway or Alaska Airlines. Upon exiting the Ferry Terminal parking lot, turn left. Drive 3/4 mile on the state highway, also known as Halibut Point Road, or walk the same distance on the separate pedestrian walkway. The Estuary Loop, where this cabin is located (in Campsite 6), is accessed from the last right turn before the end of the state highway.
From the airport, go across the O'Connell Bridge through downtown Sitka to the intersection of Sawmill Creek Road and Halibut Point Road, which is a roundabout. Turn onto Halibut Point Road and travel 7 miles north to Starrigavan Recreation Area.
The weather
the next four days · the thirty-year normal
Next four days, and the thirty-year normal
Forecast
NWS forecast for Sitka, AK
Typical weather
Typical October night 39°F, day 49°F.
Coldest month of the year: typical January night 29°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 Augusts are colder than the August line. The seven-day forecast above answers the other question.
The land, and who answers for it
what threatens it · who answers for it · a letter you can send
What threatens this place
You’re camping on ground somebody wants. We track the threats and the comment deadlines.
Who answers for this land
Starrigavan Creek Cabin is in Alaska’s at-large congressional district. Its representative, Nick Begich (R), votes on the laws that decide what happens to this land. Public-lands grade so far: F. See every public-lands vote →
Who can change it · 3
Two offices, two different asks. The draft to the agency asks it to set aside a published share of the sites here for whoever drives up. The draft to Congress asks why that share is zero and presses for a published minimum at the campgrounds it funds.
- The member who votes the moneyNicholas J. Begich IIIU.S. Representative · Alaska, at-large
- Your senator, on the same appropriationDan SullivanU.S. Senator · Alaska
- Your senator, on the same appropriationLisa MurkowskiU.S. Senator · Alaska
Read the draft, or change the wording
For the camper who turned up, or tried to book, and couldn’t get in. Every draft is written from this campground’s own record (its agency, its unit, its site count and its own weekend) and the buttons above copy whichever wording is selected here.
Asks them to put the question to the agency in writing, and to press for a published minimum share of walk-up sites across the campgrounds they fund.
Subject Walk-up camping at Starrigavan Creek Cabin, Tongass National Forest, Alaska
Dear Nicholas J. Begich III, I’m a constituent in Alaska, at-large. I tried to camp at Starrigavan Creek Cabin, Tongass National Forest, Alaska, and couldn’t. All 1 sites at Starrigavan Creek Cabin are reservable, and the agency's own record lists none held back for somebody who drives up. On Saturday, October 17, the one site recreation.gov was offering there was already booked. 1,623 of the 7,639 federal campgrounds in this country still keep at least some sites for whoever arrives first. Starrigavan Creek Cabin keeps none, and that’s a choice somebody made rather than a rule. I’m not asking you to run Starrigavan Creek Cabin. I’m asking you to put it to the U.S. Forest Service in writing: why is the share of first-come sites there zero, and what would a published minimum share cost? Please press for that minimum at the federal campgrounds you fund. The people who open these campgrounds, collect the fees and keep the water running are seasonal positions. At GS-5, base pay plus the government's own 36.25% benefit factor, one costs about $47,414 a year. One percent of the $13.3 billion the USS Gerald R. Ford cost to procure would pay for about 2,800 of them for a year. Both figures are the government's own (a Congressional Research Service report and an OPM pay table), and I’m glad to send them. Sent about Starrigavan Creek Cabin (Tongass National Forest, Alaska) via campanac.com
Asks them to put the question to the agency in writing, and to press for a published minimum share of walk-up sites across the campgrounds they fund.
Subject Walk-up camping at Starrigavan Creek Cabin, Tongass National Forest, Alaska
Dear Dan Sullivan, I’m a constituent in Alaska. I tried to camp at Starrigavan Creek Cabin, Tongass National Forest, Alaska, and couldn’t. All 1 sites at Starrigavan Creek Cabin are reservable, and the agency's own record lists none held back for somebody who drives up. On Saturday, October 17, the one site recreation.gov was offering there was already booked. 1,623 of the 7,639 federal campgrounds in this country still keep at least some sites for whoever arrives first. Starrigavan Creek Cabin keeps none, and that’s a choice somebody made rather than a rule. I’m not asking you to run Starrigavan Creek Cabin. I’m asking you to put it to the U.S. Forest Service in writing: why is the share of first-come sites there zero, and what would a published minimum share cost? Please press for that minimum at the federal campgrounds you fund. The people who open these campgrounds, collect the fees and keep the water running are seasonal positions. At GS-5, base pay plus the government's own 36.25% benefit factor, one costs about $47,414 a year. One percent of the $13.3 billion the USS Gerald R. Ford cost to procure would pay for about 2,800 of them for a year. Both figures are the government's own (a Congressional Research Service report and an OPM pay table), and I’m glad to send them. Sent about Starrigavan Creek Cabin (Tongass National Forest, Alaska) via campanac.com
Asks them to put the question to the agency in writing, and to press for a published minimum share of walk-up sites across the campgrounds they fund.
Subject Walk-up camping at Starrigavan Creek Cabin, Tongass National Forest, Alaska
Dear Lisa Murkowski, I’m a constituent in Alaska. I tried to camp at Starrigavan Creek Cabin, Tongass National Forest, Alaska, and couldn’t. All 1 sites at Starrigavan Creek Cabin are reservable, and the agency's own record lists none held back for somebody who drives up. On Saturday, October 17, the one site recreation.gov was offering there was already booked. 1,623 of the 7,639 federal campgrounds in this country still keep at least some sites for whoever arrives first. Starrigavan Creek Cabin keeps none, and that’s a choice somebody made rather than a rule. I’m not asking you to run Starrigavan Creek Cabin. I’m asking you to put it to the U.S. Forest Service in writing: why is the share of first-come sites there zero, and what would a published minimum share cost? Please press for that minimum at the federal campgrounds you fund. The people who open these campgrounds, collect the fees and keep the water running are seasonal positions. At GS-5, base pay plus the government's own 36.25% benefit factor, one costs about $47,414 a year. One percent of the $13.3 billion the USS Gerald R. Ford cost to procure would pay for about 2,800 of them for a year. Both figures are the government's own (a Congressional Research Service report and an OPM pay table), and I’m glad to send them. Sent about Starrigavan Creek Cabin (Tongass National Forest, Alaska) via campanac.com