Waterville Campground
- Right now
- Nobody has saidNo season, no closure, no bookings to read
- A night
- $24From, per site
- Sites
- 2625 on recreation.gov
The place
the agency’s own description · what’s there · 9 notices
In the agency’s own words
Waterville Campground is a popular home base for hikers who want to explore the southern White Mountains, including the scenic Pemigewasset Wilderness. The tremendous choice of local attractions and the proximity to outdoor recreation opportunities - fishing, swimming, hiking and whitewater paddling to name a few - bring campers back to Waterville again and again. The White Mountains boast pristine forests, clear mountain streams and rivers and the tallest peaks in the Northeast. The forest encompasses nearly 800,000 acres in New Hampshire and western Maine, and is one of the most popular in the country. Keep reading
Recreation
Hikers are drawn to the many trails in the area. Campers can easily access the Drakes Brook Trail (4.4 miles) and Sandwich Trail (3.9 miles), which form a loop that begins and ends near the campground. Water sports include fishing and kayaking. Anglers can cast a line for brook trout in the Mad River. A bit farther away is the Winnipesaukee River, which has a great 2.1-mile category I-II section of whitewater. Other activities such as summer concerts, a swimming area, golf course and the Gunstock ski resort are close by. Learn more about recreation in the national forest.
Facilities
A mix of standard and tent-only sites are well-spaced around a single loop. The facility provides the basic amenities of restrooms and drinking water. Many other amenities such as showers and laundry facilities are within a short drive.
Natural Features
The campground sits in a thick forest of northern hardwood trees, adjacent to the Mad River and surrounded by mountains. The national forest is home to many species of northern wildlife, including moose, white-tailed deer and black bear. Almost 200 species of birds, including the rare Bicknell's Thrush, live in the White Mountains. Contact Info For facility specific information, please call (802) 289-0970.
Nearby Attractions
Campers may want to take an afternoon to visit Gilford Beach, Dixon Point and Sandwich Beach, all near Waterville Campground. The facility is also close to Waterville Valley Resort, which offers night life, summer concert tours, restaurants, horseback riding, canoeing, mountain bike rentals and shops. The White Mountains region hosts four alpine and five nordic ski areas, which provide year-round recreation opportunities.
What the agency tells you
Two pets per site
No switching sites upon arrival
Be bear aware; keep all food out of site in approved containers or locked inside a hard-sided vehicle and remove all food from area after eating
Everything else this campground posts · 6
Please Note: Site fee includes one RV with tow vehicle, tent sites include two vehicles. If space allows a third vehicle would be an additional fee paid at time of check in if you did not pay for the Extra Vehicle Add On. Vehicles must fit on the parking spur at your site.
Reserved Sites will be held until check out time (NOON) the day following your arrival date. Sites must be occupied by the checkout time of that following day to hold a reservation or the site will be forfeited and released to other guests. Once your reservation start date has begun, neither the Recreation.gov Contact Center nor the campground manager will be able to modify your reservation.
Refunds: Refund requests made through www.recreation.gov will be charged a $10 processing fee. This fee is retained by the reservation service contractor along with the non-refundable reservation fee. All requests for the return of the non-refundable reservation fee and the cancellation fee will be declined by the campground concessionaire as they did not receive these fees (these are the fees retained by the reservation contractor, a different entity).
Visitors should be prepared for rugged trails and changing weather: Hike SafeHike Safe
Don't move firewood: To limit the spread of invasive tree-killing pests, firewood from outside the area is not permitted. Some states have quarantines and may confiscate your firewood. Please help protect our forests from invasive species by obtaining your firewood at or near your camping destination and burning it on-site. Visit dontmovefirewood.org for more information.
Click here for more information on White Mountain National Forest website
Tents and rigs
- Sites
- 26 · 6 tent-only
- Hookups
- None
- Longest rig
- 30 ft
- Accessible sites
- 21
- Pets
- Allowed
- Shade
- Every site
Facilities
- Drinking water
- Yes
- “…the basic amenities of restrooms and drinking water. Many other amenities such as showers and laundry…”
- Stay limit
- 14 nights
- recreation.gov facility rule maxStay
Around the campground
- On the water
- River, Creek, Beach
- Biking
- Boating
- Fishing
- Hiking
- Horseback riding
- Swimming
- Winter sports
- Night sky · 18th darkest of 28 in NH
- Bortle 3
- Fall color · reported 13 days ago, 22 km away
- Past peak
No reading yet, book on recreation.gov
recreation.gov lists 25 of the 26 campsites the agency files here. The rest aren’t on its booking system, so a reservation won’t get you one.
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 Sep 10, 2026 · How we know all this
The sites
29 records · which ones have room · the site map
The sites, ranked
from 25 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. 26 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.
| MANAGEMENT SITES | H1 | type not stated | 82 ft | $24 | |||
| MANAGEMENT SITES | XXX | unnamed record | 30 ft | yes | $24 | ||
| MANAGEMENT SITES | XXX2 | unnamed record | $24 | ||||
| MANAGEMENT SITES | XXX3 | unnamed record | $24 | ||||
| WATE | 002 | standard nonelectric | 25 ft | yes | 101 ft | 62 ft | $24 |
| WATE | 003 | standard nonelectric | 25 ft | yes | 39 ft | 116 ft | $24 |
| WATE | 004 | standard nonelectric | 25 ft | yes | 50 ft | 52 ft | $24 |
| WATE | 005 | standard nonelectric | 30 ft | yes | 50 ft | 18 ft | $24 |
| WATE | 006 | standard nonelectric | 30 ft | yes | 101 ft | 62 ft | $24 |
| WATE | 008 | standard nonelectric | 25 ft | yes | 55 ft | under 10 ft | $24 |
| WATE | 009 | standard nonelectric | 30 ft | yes | 55 ft | under 10 ft | $24 |
| WATE | 010 | standard nonelectric | 30 ft | yes | 47 ft | 89 ft | $24 |
| WATE | 011 | tent only nonelectric | yes | 47 ft | 108 ft | $24 | |
| WATE | 012 | standard nonelectric | 30 ft | yes | 83 ft | 58 ft | $24 |
| WATE | 013 | standard nonelectric | 30 ft | yes | 72 ft | under 10 ft | $24 |
| WATE | 014 | standard nonelectric | 30 ft | yes | 72 ft | 31 ft | $24 |
| WATE | 015 | standard nonelectric | 30 ft | yes | 60 ft | 95 ft | $24 |
| WATE | 016 | standard nonelectric | 30 ft | yes | 60 ft | 156 ft | $24 |
| WATE | 017 | standard nonelectric | 30 ft | yes | 37 ft | 218 ft | $24 |
| WATE | 018 | standard nonelectric | 30 ft | yes | 26 ft | 194 ft | $24 |
| WATE | 019 | standard nonelectric | 30 ft | yes | 26 ft | 171 ft | $24 |
| WATE | 020 | tent only nonelectric | 57 ft | 101 ft | $24 | ||
| WATE | 021 | standard nonelectric | 30 ft | yes | 67 ft | under 10 ft | $24 |
| WATE | 022 | tent only nonelectric | 44 ft | 66 ft | $24 | ||
| WATE | 023 | tent only nonelectric | 44 ft | 100 ft | $24 | ||
| WATE | 024 | standard nonelectric | 30 ft | yes | 33 ft | 54 ft | $24 |
| WATE | 025 | tent only nonelectric | yes | 51 ft | 120 ft | $24 | |
| WATE | 026 | standard nonelectric | 30 ft | yes | 33 ft | 73 ft | $24 |
| WATE | 027 | tent only nonelectric | 39 ft | 155 ft | $24 |
The agency files 3 more records here that aren’t sites for the night. It types every one of them MANAGEMENT rather than a campsite. 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
Osceola Vista CampgroundWhite Mountain National Forest · 2.2 mi
Campton CampgroundWhite Mountain National Forest · 7.5 mi
Big RockWhite Mountain National Forest · 7.8 miPassaconaway CampgroundWhite Mountain National Forest · 7.9 mi
Radeke CabinWhite Mountain National Forest · 8.0 mi
Russell Pond CampgroundWhite Mountain National Forest · 8.4 miFrom Highway 93, take exit 28. Follow Highway 49 east for 10 miles, then turn left on Tripoli Road. The campground is 0.25 miles on the left.
The weather
the next four days · the thirty-year normal
Next four days, and the thirty-year normal
Forecast
NWS forecast for Center Sandwich, NH
Typical weather
Typical October night 34°F, day 58°F.
Coldest month of the year: typical January night 7°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
Waterville Campground is in New Hampshire’s 2nd congressional district. Its representative, Maggie Goodlander (D), votes on the laws that decide what happens to this land. Public-lands grade so far: A+. See every public-lands vote →