Trace Branch Campground
- Right now
- Nobody has saidNo season, no closure, no bookings to read
- A night
- $24From, per site
- Sites
- 27All of them booked ahead
The place
the agency’s own description · what’s there · 2 notices
In the agency’s own words
The Trace Branch Campground, located on Buckhorn Lake, is a great launchpad for outdoor activities in Kentucky's lush Cumberland Plateau. The facility features plenty of shade and open grassy areas for spreading out and enjoying the landscape of the Appalachian Mountain Range. Keep reading
Recreation
Buckhorn lake offers ideal conditions for anglers including seclusion from fishing pressure and boat traffic, producing some of the best muskie fishing in the area. With comfortable water temperatures,swimming and water skiing are popular in summer months and hikers are encouraged to take advantage of the area's many miles of trails.
Facilities
Trace Branch Campground boasts mostly waterfront campsites with electric and water hookups. Amenities include a shower house, playground, horseshoe pits, and a convenient fishing area.
Natural Features
Buckhorn Lake is situated in the Cumberland Plateau of eastern Kentucky. The rugged plateau landscape is deeply traversed by a series of narrow, winding valleys separated by steep watersheds with branching streams. The Kentucky River feeds the lake, originating in the southeast of the state and flowing generally northwestward.
Nearby Attractions
Nearby destinations include the Lilley Cornett Woods, Daniel Boone National Forest, Natural Bridge State Resort Park and the Red River Gorge Geological Area.
What the agency tells you
Campground is prone to flooding when lake levels are high
Don't Move Firewood: Protect your forests from tree-killing pests by buying your firewood locally and burning it on-site. Visit Dontmovefirewood.org for further information.
Tents and rigs
- Sites
- 27
- Hookups
- 27 electric, 27 water
- Longest rig
- 55 ft
- Paved pads
- All
- Accessible sites
- 1
- Pets
- Allowed
- Campfires
- Allowed, barring fire bans
- Shade
- Every site
Facilities
- Toilets
- Flush Toilets
- FLUSH TOILETS on 1 of 29 campsite records
- Showers
- Yes, the record doesn’t say what kind
- SHOWERS on 1 of 29 campsite records
- Drinking water
- Yes
- WATER (SEASONAL) on 1 of 29 campsite records
- Dump station
- Yes
- recreation.gov lists “Dump Station”
- Playground
- Yes
- Stay limit
- 14 nights
- recreation.gov facility rule maxStay
Around the campground
- On the water
- Lake, River, Creek
- Boating
- Fishing
- Swimming
- Visitor center
- Water sports
- Night sky · 8th darkest of 60 in KY
- Bortle 4
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 · 13
What you actually pay
Derived by CAMPANAC: the agency’s published rate for this season, $24 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
29 records · which ones have room · the site map
The sites, ranked
from 29 mapped sitesAll 29 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. 27 of the 29 sites listed carry one, and a site whose type has no published rate sits out of the price rather than being called free.
Measured shade is NLCD Tree Canopy Cover 2024 (USDA Forest Service / MRLC) read at the site’s own coordinate, 27% canopy or more, and only for the sites the agency gave no Shade value. It never changes the agency’s own shaded count beside it.
| CMPG | Host | host pad | 50 ft | 50 amp | 16 ft | 180 ftBuckhorn Lake | $24 | |
| CMPG | S-02 | standard electric | 45 ft | 50 amp | 16 ft | 164 ftBuckhorn Lake | $24 | |
| CMPG | S-03 | standard electric | 40 ft | 50 amp | 36 ft | 172 ftBuckhorn Lake | $24 | |
| CMPG | S-04 | standard electric | 50 ft | 50 amp | 24 ft | 138 ftBuckhorn Lake | $24 | |
| CMPG | S-05 | standard electric | 55 ft | 50 amp | 24 ft | 124 ftBuckhorn Lake | $24 | |
| CMPG | S-06 | standard electric | 20 ft | 50 amp | 43 ft | 85 ftBuckhorn Lake | $24 | |
| CMPG | S-07 | standard electric | 20 ft | 50 amp | 5 ft | 96 ftBuckhorn Lake | $24 | |
| CMPG | S-08 | standard electric | 30 ft | 50 amp | 5 ft | 91 ftBuckhorn Lake | $24 | |
| CMPG | S-09 | standard electric | 30 ft | 50 amp | 35 ft | 86 ftBuckhorn Lake | $24 | |
| CMPG | S-10 | standard electric | 20 ft | 50 amp | 35 ft | 84 ftBuckhorn Lake | $24 | |
| CMPG | S-11 | standard electric | 30 ft | 50 amp | 30 ft | 33 ftBuckhorn Lake | $24 | |
| CMPG | S-12 | standard electric | 30 ft | 50 amp | 15 ft | 33 ftBuckhorn Lake | $24 | |
| CMPG | S-13 | standard electric | 30 ft | 50 amp | 15 ft | 29 ftBuckhorn Lake | $24 | |
| CMPG | S-14 | standard electric | 30 ft | 50 amp | 32 ft | 37 ftBuckhorn Lake | $24 | |
| CMPG | S-15 | standard electric | 30 ft | 50 amp | 35 ft | 38 ftBuckhorn Lake | $24 | |
| CMPG | S-16 | standard electric | 30 ft | 50 amp | 35 ft | 40 ftBuckhorn Lake | $24 | |
| CMPG | S-17 | standard electric | 20 ft | 50 amp | 35 ft | 44 ftBuckhorn Lake | $24 | |
| CMPG | S-18 | standard electric | 30 ft | 50 amp | 36 ft | 44 ftBuckhorn Lake | $24 | |
| CMPG | S-19 | standard electric | 30 ft | 50 amp | 25 ft | 63 ftBuckhorn Lake | $24 | |
| CMPG | S-20 | standard electric | 30 ft | 50 amp | 25 ft | 56 ftBuckhorn Lake | $24 | |
| CMPG | S-21 | standard electric | 30 ft | 50 amp | 25 ft | 32 ftBuckhorn Lake | $24 | |
| CMPG | S-22 | standard electric | 30 ft | 50 amp | 32 ft | 31 ftBuckhorn Lake | $24 | |
| CMPG | S-23 | standard electric | 30 ft | 50 amp | 35 ft | 40 ftBuckhorn Lake | $24 | |
| CMPG | S-24 | standard electric | 30 ft | 50 amp | 35 ft | 47 ftBuckhorn Lake | $24 | |
| CMPG | S-25 | standard electric | 30 ft | 50 amp | 37 ft | 55 ftBuckhorn Lake | $24 | |
| CMPG | S-26 | standard electric | 30 ft | 50 amp | 37 ft | 56 ftBuckhorn Lake | $24 | |
| CMPG | S-27 | standard electric | 30 ft | 50 amp | 37 ft | 39 ftBuckhorn Lake | $24 | |
| CMPG | S-28 | standard electric | 30 ft | 50 amp | yes | 71 ft | 41 ftBuckhorn Lake | $24 |
| Trace Branch Campground | Maple Shelter | day use | 374 ft | 109 ftBuckhorn Lake |
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 29 listed
Getting there
the map and the coordinate · the agency’s directions · the phone number
Where it is
Confluence Recreation Area5.8 mi
Leatherwood Recreation Area5.8 mi
Buckhorn Campground9.3 mi
Littcarr Campground23 miTurkey Foot CampgroundDaniel Boone National Forest · 34 mi
S-Tree Campground38 miFrom Lexington, KY, take I-75 south 83 miles to London. Take exit 41 or 38 to Daniel Boone Parkway east and continue 44 miles to Hyden Spur. Exit towards Tim Couch Pass and turn left towards Thousandsticks onto Bull Creek Road.
Go 2.5 miles to KY Highway 257, then head north about 9 miles to the Confluence bridge. Turn right and cross the bridge, then take a left on Mosley Bend Road. Continue 2 miles to Trace Branch Campground on your left.
The weather
the next four days · the thirty-year normal
Next four days, and the thirty-year normal
Forecast
NWS forecast for Hyden, KY
Typical weather
Typical October night 44°F, day 71°F.
Coldest month of the year: typical January night 25°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
What threatens this place
You’re camping on ground somebody wants. We track the threats and the comment deadlines.
Who answers for this land
Trace Branch Campground is in Kentucky’s 5th congressional district. Its representative, Hal Rogers (R), votes on the laws that decide what happens to this land. Public-lands grade so far: F. See every public-lands vote →