Sweetwater (Stanislaus National Forest)
1Heads up1 fire 28 mi away
- Right now
- Nobody has saidNo season, no closure, no bookings to read
- A night
- $29From, per site
- Sites
- 13All of them booked ahead
The place
the agency’s own description · what’s there · 8 notices
In the agency’s own words
Sweetwater Campground is located on a mixed conifer forested site adjacent to Highway 120, in close proximity to Yosemite National Park. Sites offer camping furniture (picnic tables, campfire pit with grill). Accessible vault toilets and potable water is available. Keep reading
Facilities
Sweetwater Campground has 12 single camping units. All units are suitable for tents & RV's (32 ft. max). All interior and spur roads are poaved. Each unit contains at least one picnic table, fire ring and bear box. This is one double vault toilet until (2 toilets). Well water is available and is piped to 3 faucets throughout the campground.
Nearby Attractions
Rainbow Pools is .8 miles from campground and has hiking around it. Preston Fall Trailhead is 7.3 miles from the campground and is a 4.5 mile hike. Carlon Day Use area is 9.8 miles from the campground. Buck Meadow is 3.1 miles from the campground.
What the agency tells you
Be Bear aware; keep all food out of site in approved containers or locked inside your vehicle and remove all food from area after eating
Firewood resrictions are in effect to prevent the spread of invasive insects and disease. Click here https://www.dontmovefirewood.org/ for more information.
Electric site hook-ups are not available at this facility.
Everything else this campground posts · 5
This campground has first-come, first-served single family campsites. These sites and walk-ins are cash or check only (no credit cards accepted).
A fee will be charged for additional vehicles.
RV's 32 ft. max
Don't Move Firewood: Protect California's forests from tree-killing pests by buying your firewood locally and burning it on-site. For more information visit http://www.firewood.ca.gov/
Customer Service Contact 801-226-3564 or Help.Stanislaus.Groveland@AmericanLL.com
Tents and rigs
- Sites
- 13
- Hookups
- None
- Accessible sites
- None listed
- Pets
- Allowed
- Campfires
- Allowed, barring fire bans
- Shade
- 8 of 13 sites
Facilities
- Toilets
- Vault Toilets
- “…campfire pit with grill). Accessible vault toilets and potable water is available. Facilities…”
- Drinking water
- Yes
- “…grill). Accessible vault toilets and potable water is available. Facilities Sweetwater Campground has…”
- Bear boxes
- Yes
- Camp host
- On site
- recreation.gov lists “Host”
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 · 12
What you actually pay
Derived by CAMPANAC: the agency’s published rate for this season, $29 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 Sep 10, 2026 · How we know all this
The sites
13 sites · which ones have room · the site map
The sites, ranked
from 13 mapped sitesAll 13 sites
Toilet distances are OpenStreetMap’s, measured for 13 of the 13 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. 13 of the 13 sites listed carry one, and a site whose type has no published rate sits out of the price rather than being called free.
| 1 | standard nonelectric | 148 ft | 1,902 ftSouth Fork Tuolumne River | 576 ft | $29 |
| 10 | standard nonelectric | 54 ft | 1,439 ft | 83 ft | $29 |
| 11 | standard nonelectric | 46 ft | 1,435 ft | 89 ft | $29 |
| 12 | standard nonelectric | 46 ft | 1,465 ft | 86 ft | $29 |
| 14 | standard nonelectric | 182 ft | 1,627 ft | 214 ft | $29 |
| 2 | standard nonelectric | 80 ft | 1,861 ft | 463 ft | $29 |
| 3 | standard nonelectric | 117 ft | 1,904 ft | 568 ft | $29 |
| 4 | standard nonelectric | 80 ft | 1,783 ft | 420 ft | $29 |
| 5 | standard nonelectric | 101 ft | 1,707 ft | 306 ft | $29 |
| 6 | standard nonelectric | 95 ft | 1,802 ft | 348 ft | $29 |
| 7 | standard nonelectric | 95 ft | 1,745 ft | 257 ft | $29 |
| 8 | standard nonelectric | 93 ft | 1,630 ft | 112 ft | $29 |
| 9 | standard nonelectric | 93 ft | 1,598 ft | 120 ft | $29 |
Getting there
the map and the coordinate · the agency’s directions · the phone number
Where it is
Sweetwater CampgroundStanislaus National Forest · 0.0 miLumsden Bridge CampgroundStanislaus National Forest · 2.2 mi
Lost ClaimStanislaus National Forest · 2.4 miSouth Fork CampgroundStanislaus National Forest · 2.5 mi
Pines CampgroundStanislaus National Forest · 4.9 mi
Pines StanislausStanislaus National Forest · 4.9 mi15 miles east of Groveland on Highway 120
The weather
the next four days · the thirty-year normal
Next four days, and the thirty-year normal
Forecast
NWS forecast for Buck Meadows, CA
Typical weather
Typical October night 42°F, day 74°F.
Coldest month of the year: typical December night 31°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
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
Sweetwater (Stanislaus National Forest) is in California’s 5th congressional district. Its representative, Tom McClintock (R), votes on the laws that decide what happens to this land. Public-lands grade so far: F. See every public-lands vote →