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U.S. Army Corps of Engineers · LA

Sterlington Recreation Area

Day use, not campingThe agency files 1 record here and marks it day use, not overnight. On its own record there’s nothing here to spend the night in. read 14:18 UTC

We don’t think it should be. Every campground should hold some sites for whoever drives up.Tell your representative →

Watch for a cancellationBook on recreation.gov ↗
Right now
Taking bookingsSites offered on 30 of the next 30 nights read 14:18 UTC
Photos · Louisiana Field Office
80 ftElevation
457 ftWater · Ouachita River
In townSterlington, LA
31%Tree cover
Bortle 4Night sky · 22nd darkest of 22 in LA

The place

the agency’s own description · what’s there · 1 notices

In the agency’s own words

Pavilion located at the Sterlington Recreation Area Recreation Sterlington Recreation Area has a play ground, frisbee golf, and a boat ramp Facilities Picnic shelter with access to a comfrort station Natural Features Located near the Ouachita River Nearby Attractions Sterlington Louisiana is located 20 miles north of Monroe Louisiana

Source: Recreation.gov data (RIDB), full extract · Aug 23, 2026

What the agency tells you

Rule

Park hours: 7:00 am - 8:00 pm

Source: recreation.gov facility notices, quoted verbatim · Sep 9, 2026

Facilities

Toilets
Flush Toilets
ACCESSIBLE FLUSH TOILETS on 1 of 1 campsite records
Drinking water
Yes
DRINKING WATER on 1 of 1 campsite records
Boat ramp
Yes
Source: Stated in the agency description · Aug 23, 2026
Water, toilets and showers: counted from this campground’s own campsite records, shown above · Sep 12, 2026

Around the campground

On the water
River
Disc Golf
Picnicking
Playground Park Specialized Sport Site
Source: Recreation.gov activity records · Aug 23, 2026

Full this Saturdayread 14:18 UTC

The agency files 1 record here and marks it day use, not overnight. On its own record there’s nothing here to spend the night in. How full the weekend is nationally.

OpenBooked

The one site on offer is taken this Saturday. 1 is free on Mon, Oct 19. read 14:18 UTC Why the weekend fills and the week doesn’t

Booking windowThrough October 31Bookable now through October 31, 2026, the end of the peak season. The off-peak season that follows runs November 1, 2026 through December 31, 2026; recreation.gov releases it on its own schedule, so check there before counting on those nights.recreation.gov
Sites, a night, from$50From the rate schedule matched to 1 of its 1 sites. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers publishes no campground-level rate we can read.derived by CAMPANAC
If plans change$10 to cancel$10 to change a reservationrecreation.gov’s schedule
Runs itU.S. Army Corps of EngineersBooked through recreation.govthe agency’s record
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.

Free forever, no booking kickbacks.
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’ll write once, when the season that starts Sun, Nov 1 2026 is open for booking.

Free forever, no booking kickbacks.
Book on recreation.gov ↗

We make nothing when you book. The link goes straight to the government.

Every line of the receipt · 12

What you actually pay

The sign priceU.S. Army Corps of Engineers
Sites, a night, from$50
Derived by CAMPANAC from the rate schedule matched to 1 of its 1 sites. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers publishes no campground-level rate for this campground that we can read, only per-site rate templates its own record matches to each site’s own type.
Group area, a night$50
Rates for the season the campground is in now, Mar 1, 2026 to Oct 31, 2026.
The booking feerecreation.gov
Reservation fee, booked online$8
One fee per reservation, however many nights you book, and it’s non-refundable. $9 if you book by phone, $3 in person.
Pass discounts only apply to the recreation (or use) fee for the facility. Other charges such as electricity or water hookups, reservation or other fees are not eligible for a discount.
What a stay costs
The agency publishes no nightly rate for this campground, so there’s nothing to add the $8 booking fee to. We won’t total a receipt with a number missing from it.
If your plans changerecreation.gov
Change fee, moving to dates outside your booking$10
Cancellation fee$10
Cancelling the day before, or the day of$10 + your first night
No-show$20 + your first night

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
Sites from: Derived by CAMPANAC from this campground's own priced campsites, using recreation.gov facility rate schedule matched to each site's own published type · Sep 14, 2026
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
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: Recreation.gov data (RIDB), full extract · Aug 23, 2026

recreation.gov availability, read 14:18 UTC · rules read Sep 9, 2026 · rates Sep 10, 2026 · How we know all this

Seen something wrong here? Tell us.

The sites

1 records · the site map

All 1 records

1 of 1 records located
Day use1
Picnic Shelter
Aerial · Esri World Imagery
Sites: recreation.gov (RIDB), coordinates as published · Aug 23, 2026
Imagery: Esri World Imagery
Picnic Shelterday use20 ampyes457 ft$50

The agency files 1 more record here that isn’t a site for the night. It files it as day use. It’s in the table above, marked for what it is, and it isn’t counted as a site.

Price: Derived by CAMPANAC: each site takes the per-night rate this campground publishes for the site’s own site type (recreation.gov rate schedule). recreation.gov publishes no per-campsite fee, and a site whose type carries no published rate is left blank rather than called free · Sep 11, 2026

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.

Source: Recreation.gov data (RIDB), full extract · Aug 23, 2026

Getting there

the map and the coordinate · the phone number
Coordinate32.69903, -92.08254
The phone318-324-5482
The agency’s pageOfficial page ↗

Where it is

Source: Recreation.gov data (RIDB), full extract · Aug 23, 2026

The weather

the thirty-year normal

Next four days, and the thirty-year normal

Typical weather

Typical October night 52°F, day 76°F.

Coldest month of the year: typical January night 34°F. Bring the bag rated for it.

100°32°20°

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: BASTROP, LA (USC00160537), 10 miles away and 70 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

who answers for it · a letter you can send

Who answers for this land

Mike Johnson, official portrait

Sterlington Recreation Area is in Louisiana’s 4th congressional district. Its representative, Mike Johnson (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
Who can change it · 3
Write to somebody who can change it

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.

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.

To Mike Johnson

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 Sterlington Recreation Area, Louisiana

Dear Mike Johnson,

I’m a constituent in Louisiana’s 4th district. I tried to camp at Sterlington Recreation Area, Louisiana, and couldn’t.

Every site at Sterlington Recreation Area is 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 7,647 federal campgrounds in this country still keep at least some sites for whoever arrives first. Sterlington Recreation Area keeps none, and that’s a choice somebody made rather than a rule.

I’m not asking you to run Sterlington Recreation Area. I’m asking you to put it to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers 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 Sterlington Recreation Area (Louisiana) via campanac.com
To Bill Cassidy

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 Sterlington Recreation Area, Louisiana

Dear Bill Cassidy,

I’m a constituent in Louisiana. I tried to camp at Sterlington Recreation Area, Louisiana, and couldn’t.

Every site at Sterlington Recreation Area is 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 7,647 federal campgrounds in this country still keep at least some sites for whoever arrives first. Sterlington Recreation Area keeps none, and that’s a choice somebody made rather than a rule.

I’m not asking you to run Sterlington Recreation Area. I’m asking you to put it to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers 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 Sterlington Recreation Area (Louisiana) via campanac.com
To John Kennedy

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 Sterlington Recreation Area, Louisiana

Dear John Kennedy,

I’m a constituent in Louisiana. I tried to camp at Sterlington Recreation Area, Louisiana, and couldn’t.

Every site at Sterlington Recreation Area is 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 7,647 federal campgrounds in this country still keep at least some sites for whoever arrives first. Sterlington Recreation Area keeps none, and that’s a choice somebody made rather than a rule.

I’m not asking you to run Sterlington Recreation Area. I’m asking you to put it to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers 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 Sterlington Recreation Area (Louisiana) via campanac.com
How we know this · 4
Contacts: Contact forms from @unitedstates/congress-legislators · Sep 9, 2026
The figures in these drafts: Navy Ford (CVN-78) Class Aircraft Carrier Program: Background and Issues for Congress (CRS Report RS20643) · Updated December 4, 2025 · “The ship’s final procurement cost was $13,316.5 million (i.e., about $13.3 billion) in then-year dollars.”
The figures in these drafts: Salary Table 2026-GS, Incorporating the 1% General Schedule Increase, Effective January 2026 (U.S. Office of Personnel Management) · Effective January 2026 · “Grade 5, Step 1: $34,799 (annual rate, before locality pay).”
The figures in these drafts: Update to Civilian Position Full Fringe Benefit Cost Factor, Federal Pay Raise Assumptions, and Inflation Factors used in OMB Circular No. A-76 (OMB Memorandum M-08-13) · March 11, 2008 · “the civilian position full fringe benefit cost factor needs to be adjusted downward, from 36.45 percent to 36.25 percent”

How we know

every fact on this page, and where it came from
Right now: recreation.gov is offering sites on 30 of the next 30 nights, which isn’t something a closed campground does.
Sites on recreation.gov: recreation.gov’s own month availability payload for this facility, asked for October 2026 and November 2026. It names 1 of the 0 campsites the agency files here, and every one of them carries an answer either way. A campground nobody has read carries no answer at all, never a no. · Oct 15, 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: 1.1 mcd/m² of artificial all-sky glow, ranked against the 22 rated federal campgrounds in Louisiana · 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 Army Corps’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