Tully Lake Recreation Area (MA)
This place has sites and nobody may sleep in them.Ask for camping here →
- Right now
- Nobody has saidNo season, no closure, no bookings to read
The place
the agency’s own description · what’s there · 6 notices
In the agency’s own words
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers invites you to come relax at Tully Lake. There are a variety of outdoor recreation activities for you and you family. Although the dam was built primarily to reduce flood damages on the Millers and Connecticut Rivers, the 1,300-acre reservoir area provides a place for you to get away from it all and connect with nature. Keep reading
Recreation
Tully Lake offers many opportunities to enjoy the outdoors. Activities in and around the lake include mountain biking, camping, disc golf, hiking, picnicking, boating, and fishing and hunting in the appropriate seasons.
Facilities
The Tully Lake Pavilion is located in the recreation area and offers picnic tables and grills. Maximum group size is 50 people with parking for 25 passenger vehicles at the upper gravel lot. The recreation area has a small playground for young children, volleyball court, and a horseshoe pit. Bathrooms are provided, but there is no running water.
Natural Features
The 1,262-acre Tully Lake property is managed to sustain a healthy ecosystem for future generations. The thriving biodiversity of the Tully River Valley and the interconnections of our forests, wetlands, waters, and wildlife are valued and managed for the long term. Tully Lake is home to a wide variety of wildlife, from tiny insects and song birds, to large mammals such as deer and moose. Fifty-five percent of the reservoir area is wetlands, providing habitat for fish, waterfowl, song birds, insects, reptiles, amphibians, and mammals such as beaver, mink and otter. The rest of the property provides habitat for upland species such as deer, coyote, fisher, owl, fox, raccoon, skunk, porcupine, rabbit, and squirrel. The forest within Tully Dam's reservoir area is composed primarily of white pine, providing habitat for owls and woodpeckers, red-tailed hawks, and white-tailed deer.
Nearby Attractions
When visiting Tully Lake there are several opportunities for visitors to explore in the surrounding area. At the north end of the lake there is a tent only campground run by the Trustees of the Reservations which provides a perfect launching point to enjoy the outdoor attractions nearby. Ten miles away is the Birch Hill Dam, another Army Corps project that provides miles of trails and river to explore. The Quabbin Reservoir is also within a short ten mile drive of Tully Lake and serves the city of Boston as its water supply. The Quabbin is a unique area; there were four towns flooded to create it, and it has some of the most interesting blends of human and natural history in the region.
Charges & Cancellations
Please review the cancellation and refund policy at the bottom of the webpage. In general, we will require at least two weeks prior to your reservation to consider a request.
What the agency tells you
The Recreation Area is fully open from May to October.
The upper gate will remain open for winter visitors.
The Canoe Launch is open from April to November.
Everything else this campground posts · 3
The trails and Disc Golf are open year-round, as conditions allow.
Facilities may be closed during flood storage events.
Pets are allowed but must be on a leash and their waste picked up.
Facilities
- Drinking water
- None, bring your own
- “…pit. Bathrooms are provided, but there is no running water. Natural Features The 1,262-acre Tully Lake…”
- Playground
- Yes
- Stay limit
- 14 nights
- recreation.gov facility rule maxStay
Around the campground
- On the water
- Reservoir, Lake, River
- Biking
- Hiking
- Wildlife viewing
Nothing here to sleep in
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.
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
“Please review the cancellation and refund policy at the bottom of the webpage. In general, we will require at least two weeks prior to your reservation to consider a request.” · this campground’s own terms
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 · 6
rules read Sep 9, 2026 · rates Sep 10, 2026 · How we know all this
The sites
1 records · the site map
All 1 records
Toilet distances are OpenStreetMap’s, measured for 1 of the 1 sites listed. A site with no reading is unknown, never far.
| Tully Lake Picnic Shelter | Day Use Shelter | day use | yes | 213 ft | 273 ft | $40 |
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.
Getting there
the map and the coordinate · the agency’s directions · the phone number
Where it is
Otter Brook Lake Recreation Area22 miSurry Mountain Lake Campground25 mi
Surry Mountain Lake Beach25 mi
Townshend Lake Recreation Area38 mi
Indian Hollow39 mi
Westville Recreation Area40 miTully Lake is located in north central Massachusetts, about 1.5 hours west of Boston. In Massachusetts, take exit 17 on Route 2, and follow Route 32 north approximately 6 miles through Athol and into Royalston. From New Hampshire, follow Route 32 south about 8 miles from the intersection of Route 119 in Richmond. Route 32 goes over Tully Dam and provides direct access to the lake.
The weather
the next four days · the thirty-year normal
Next four days, and the thirty-year normal
Forecast
NWS forecast for Athol, MA
Typical weather
Typical October night 41°F, day 62°F.
Coldest month of the year: typical January night 14°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
who answers for it · a letter you can send
Who answers for this land
Tully Lake Recreation Area (MA) is in Massachusetts’s 2nd congressional district. Its representative, Jim McGovern (D), votes on the laws that decide what happens to this land. Public-lands grade so far: A. See every public-lands vote →
Who can change it · 3
The agency’s own record files sites here and marks every one of them day use. The draft asks whether any could open to overnight camping, and if not, why.
- The member who votes the moneyJames P. McGovernU.S. Representative · Massachusetts’s 2nd district
- Your senator, on the same appropriationEdward J. MarkeyU.S. Senator · Massachusetts
- Your senator, on the same appropriationElizabeth WarrenU.S. Senator · Massachusetts
Read the draft, or change the wording
Asks them to put the same question to the agency in writing.
Subject Tully Lake Recreation Area (MA) has sites, and nobody may sleep in them
Dear James P. McGovern, I’m a constituent in Massachusetts’s 2nd district. Tully Lake Recreation Area (MA), Massachusetts carries 1 record on the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’s own file, every one of them marked day use rather than overnight. I’m asking you to put one question to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in writing: would they consider opening any of these sites to overnight camping, and if not, why not? Road trips and camping on public land are part of how this country knows itself. It’s where a lot of people meet the place they live in for the first time, and it has never been something you had to be well off, or well organised six months in advance, to do. Sent about Tully Lake Recreation Area (MA) (Massachusetts) via campanac.com
Asks them to put the same question to the agency in writing.
Subject Tully Lake Recreation Area (MA) has sites, and nobody may sleep in them
Dear Edward J. Markey, I’m a constituent in Massachusetts. Tully Lake Recreation Area (MA), Massachusetts carries 1 record on the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’s own file, every one of them marked day use rather than overnight. I’m asking you to put one question to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in writing: would they consider opening any of these sites to overnight camping, and if not, why not? Road trips and camping on public land are part of how this country knows itself. It’s where a lot of people meet the place they live in for the first time, and it has never been something you had to be well off, or well organised six months in advance, to do. Sent about Tully Lake Recreation Area (MA) (Massachusetts) via campanac.com
Asks them to put the same question to the agency in writing.
Subject Tully Lake Recreation Area (MA) has sites, and nobody may sleep in them
Dear Elizabeth Warren, I’m a constituent in Massachusetts. Tully Lake Recreation Area (MA), Massachusetts carries 1 record on the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’s own file, every one of them marked day use rather than overnight. I’m asking you to put one question to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in writing: would they consider opening any of these sites to overnight camping, and if not, why not? Road trips and camping on public land are part of how this country knows itself. It’s where a lot of people meet the place they live in for the first time, and it has never been something you had to be well off, or well organised six months in advance, to do. Sent about Tully Lake Recreation Area (MA) (Massachusetts) via campanac.com