Walnut Flats Campground
This is how it should work.
- Right now
- OpenThe agency lists it open
- A night
- FreeNo camping fee
- Season
- April 1 – December 7Open April 1 through December 7
The place
the agency’s own description · what’s there
In the agency’s own words
This small, primitive campground is well suited for tent camping but also accommodates small recreation vehicles. It has shaded sites clustered around a grassy opening surrounded by forest. Flat Top Mountain Trail System, the Appalachian Trail, Dismal Creek (a stocked trout stream), and the Falls of Dismal are close by.
Around the campground
- On the water
- Creek
Nothing to book, just show up
One of 1,623 federal campgrounds where the site still goes to whoever pulls in first, and it costs nothing at all. Get there before noon on a summer weekend.
recreation.gov publishes no availability for a campground you can’t reserve, so there’s no thirty-night reading to draw here. The season bar above is what the agency does publish.
Every line of the receipt · 4
What you actually pay
Derived by CAMPANAC: the agency’s own record says there’s no camping fee, and no booking fee, because this campground takes no reservations. A weekend here means Friday and Saturday night. Optional charges (an extra vehicle, a second tent, a dump-station fee) are listed separately and aren’t in this total.
How we know this receipt · 5
record Aug 24, 2026 · How we know all this
Getting there
the map and the coordinate
Where it is
Boley Field Group CampgroundJefferson National Forest · 20 mi
Stony Fork CabinJefferson National Forest · 21 mi
Stony Fork CampgroundJefferson National Forest · 21 miCollins Cove Horse CampgroundJefferson National Forest · 27 mi
Raven Cliff Recreation AreaJefferson National Forest · 27 miWhite Rocks CampgroundJefferson National Forest · 27 miThe weather
the next four days · the thirty-year normal
Next four days, and the thirty-year normal
Forecast
NWS forecast for Mechanicsburg, VA
Typical weather
Typical October night 41°F, day 66°F.
Coldest night of the open season: typical December night 26°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 moreOutside the published season
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
Roadless country, and what’s coming for it
You’re camping on ground somebody wants. We track the threats and the comment deadlines.
Who answers for this land
Walnut Flats Campground is in Virginia’s 9th congressional district. Its representative, H. Morgan Griffith (R), votes on the laws that decide what happens to this land. Public-lands grade so far: F. See every public-lands vote →