Wilborn Creek (Group Camp)
We don’t think it should be. Every campground should hold some sites for whoever drives up.Tell your representative →
- Right now
- Taking bookingsSites offered on 3 of the next 8 nights read 16:19 UTC
- Sites
- 1All of them booked ahead
The place
the agency’s own description · what’s there · 3 notices
In the agency’s own words
Wilborn Creek Group Camp sits on the northern shore of Lake Shelbyville in the heart of central Illinois. The lake and surrounding land offer outdoor activities for people of all ages, including fishing, swimming, picnicking and simply relaxing. Visit the Lake Shelbyville, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for News Releases, Event Information, & Emergency Updates. https://www.facebook.com/LakeShelbyvilleUSACE Visit it our USACE Lake Shelbyville Website for more information on Lake Shelbyville. https://www.mvs.usace.army. Keep reading
mil/Missions/Recreation/Lake-Shelbyville/ Recreation Lake Shelbyville offers a multitude of fishing opportunities for catfish, crappie, largemouth bass, muskie, walleye, white bass and bluegill. A boat ramp, courtesy dock and fish cleaning station are about a mile from the group camp, and for those without a boat, several ponds with farmed fish are available around the lake. Hunting areas located within a short drive offer numerous game species, including quail, rabbit, pheasant, deer, dove, turkey, waterfowl and woodcock.
Facilities
The group camping area has 10 paved full hook-up sites. Each site offers 50 Amp service along with water and sewer. The area also has several picnic tables and grills to accommodate those who wish to tent camp. The facility has one dual, unisex shower facility with flush toilets. Picnic shelter with electricity. Boat ramp nearby in the Wilborn Creek Recreation Area. Plenty of outdoor activities for guests: kayaking, canoeing, paddling, shoreline fishing, walking, and more.
Natural Features
Wilborn Creek is heavily forested with plenty of shade. Oak and hickory are the dominant tree species in the lake region. Foliage turns a variety of red, orange, purple and yellow each fall, while prairie flowers dot the landscape in spring and summer. Numerous species of songbirds, shorebirds, waterfowl and raptors inhabit the lake area, as do mammals such as cottontail rabbit, white-tail deer, gray and fox squirrel, muskrat and mink.
Nearby Attractions
Wolf Creek State Park, Woods Lake Waterfowl Refuge and Okaw Bluff Wetlands Complex are popular locations for wildlife watching, birding and hunting near Lake Shelbyville.
What the agency tells you
No outside firewood allowed; obtain or purchase firewood at or near your camping destination and burn it on-site; firewood can carry invasive insects and diseases that destroy forests; learn more
$5 per day boat launch fee; $2 per person walk/bike in per day beach use fee; $5 per vehicle per day; no day use fees charged for children under 16 years old or for those camping in an Army Corps campground or possessing applicable passes
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
- 1 · 1 group
- Hookups
- 1 electric, 1 water, 1 sewer
- Longest rig
- 80 ft
- Paved pads
- All
- Accessible sites
- None listed
- Pets
- Allowed
- Campfires
- Allowed, barring fire bans
- Shade
- Every site
Facilities
- Toilets
- Flush Toilets
- “…one dual, unisex shower facility with flush toilets. Picnic shelter with electricity. Boat ramp nearby…”
- Showers
- Yes, the record doesn’t say what kind
- “The facility has one dual, unisex shower facility with flush toilets.”
- Boat ramp
- Yes
- Stay limit
- 14 nights
- recreation.gov facility rule maxStay
Around the campground
- On the water
- Lake, Creek, Beach
- Boating
- Fishing
- Swimming
- Night sky · 3rd darkest of 30 in IL
- Bortle 4
Full this Saturdayread 16:19 UTC
How full the weekend is nationally.
1 campground has sites open within 30 miles, read 16:21 UTC. See them
OpenBookedNot reservable
Watch for a cancellation
Watch this campground
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
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
Open within 30 miles this weekend · 1
Sites the agency is offering this Friday and Saturday that nobody has taken, nearest first. read 16:21 UTC
- Lithia SpringsLake Shelbyville · 10 mi · 8 of 208 site-nights open
recreation.gov availability, read 16:19 UTC · rules read Oct 1, 2026 · rates Sep 10, 2026 · How we know all this
The sites
1 sites
All 1 sites
The price is derived by CAMPANAC, not published per site: the per-night rate this campground publishes for each site’s own site type. 1 of the 1 sites listed carry one, and a site whose type has no published rate sits out of the price rather than being called free.
| Wilborn Creek | Group Camp | group standard electric | 80 ft | 50 amp | $240 |
Getting there
the map and the coordinate · the agency’s directions · the phone number
Where it is
Forrest W. Bo Wood4.6 miSullivan Marina and Campground5.8 mi
Lone Point Group Camp8.7 mi
Lone Point8.7 mi
Coon Creek (IL)9.1 mi
Opossum Creek9.7 miFrom Sullivan, Illinois, go west on State Route 121 for 5 miles. Turn left on County Road 5 and drive 3.5 miles, then make a right on County Road 18 and drive 0.75 miles to the campground.
The weather
the next four days · the thirty-year normal
Next four days, and the thirty-year normal
Forecast
NWS forecast for Findlay, IL
Typical weather
Typical October night 44°F, day 67°F.
Coldest month of the year: typical January night 19°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
Wilborn Creek (Group Camp) is in Illinois’s 15th congressional district. Its representative, Mary Miller (R), votes on the laws that decide what happens to this land. Public-lands grade so far: F. See every public-lands vote →
Who can change it · 3
Two offices, two different asks. The draft to the agency asks it to set aside a published share of the sites here for whoever drives up. The draft to Congress asks why that share is zero and presses for a published minimum at the campgrounds it funds.
- The member who votes the moneyMary E. MillerU.S. Representative · Illinois’s 15th district
- Your senator, on the same appropriationRichard J. DurbinU.S. Senator · Illinois
- Your senator, on the same appropriationTammy DuckworthU.S. Senator · Illinois
Read the draft, or change the wording
For the camper who turned up, or tried to book, and couldn’t get in. Every draft is written from this campground’s own record (its agency, its unit, its site count and its own weekend) and the buttons above copy whichever wording is selected here.
Asks them to put the question to the agency in writing, and to press for a published minimum share of walk-up sites across the campgrounds they fund.
Subject Walk-up camping at Wilborn Creek (Group Camp), Illinois
Dear Mary E. Miller, I’m a constituent in Illinois’s 15th district. I tried to camp at Wilborn Creek (Group Camp), Illinois, and couldn’t. All 1 sites at Wilborn Creek (Group Camp) are reservable, and the agency's own record lists none held back for somebody who drives up. On Saturday, October 17, the one site recreation.gov was offering there was already booked. 1,623 of the 7,647 federal campgrounds in this country still keep at least some sites for whoever arrives first. Wilborn Creek (Group Camp) keeps none, and that’s a choice somebody made rather than a rule. I’m not asking you to run Wilborn Creek (Group Camp). I’m asking you to put it to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in writing: why is the share of first-come sites there zero, and what would a published minimum share cost? Please press for that minimum at the federal campgrounds you fund. The people who open these campgrounds, collect the fees and keep the water running are seasonal positions. At GS-5, base pay plus the government's own 36.25% benefit factor, one costs about $47,414 a year. One percent of the $13.3 billion the USS Gerald R. Ford cost to procure would pay for about 2,800 of them for a year. Both figures are the government's own (a Congressional Research Service report and an OPM pay table), and I’m glad to send them. Sent about Wilborn Creek (Group Camp) (Illinois) via campanac.com
Asks them to put the question to the agency in writing, and to press for a published minimum share of walk-up sites across the campgrounds they fund.
Subject Walk-up camping at Wilborn Creek (Group Camp), Illinois
Dear Richard J. Durbin, I’m a constituent in Illinois. I tried to camp at Wilborn Creek (Group Camp), Illinois, and couldn’t. All 1 sites at Wilborn Creek (Group Camp) are reservable, and the agency's own record lists none held back for somebody who drives up. On Saturday, October 17, the one site recreation.gov was offering there was already booked. 1,623 of the 7,647 federal campgrounds in this country still keep at least some sites for whoever arrives first. Wilborn Creek (Group Camp) keeps none, and that’s a choice somebody made rather than a rule. I’m not asking you to run Wilborn Creek (Group Camp). I’m asking you to put it to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in writing: why is the share of first-come sites there zero, and what would a published minimum share cost? Please press for that minimum at the federal campgrounds you fund. The people who open these campgrounds, collect the fees and keep the water running are seasonal positions. At GS-5, base pay plus the government's own 36.25% benefit factor, one costs about $47,414 a year. One percent of the $13.3 billion the USS Gerald R. Ford cost to procure would pay for about 2,800 of them for a year. Both figures are the government's own (a Congressional Research Service report and an OPM pay table), and I’m glad to send them. Sent about Wilborn Creek (Group Camp) (Illinois) via campanac.com
Asks them to put the question to the agency in writing, and to press for a published minimum share of walk-up sites across the campgrounds they fund.
Subject Walk-up camping at Wilborn Creek (Group Camp), Illinois
Dear Tammy Duckworth, I’m a constituent in Illinois. I tried to camp at Wilborn Creek (Group Camp), Illinois, and couldn’t. All 1 sites at Wilborn Creek (Group Camp) are reservable, and the agency's own record lists none held back for somebody who drives up. On Saturday, October 17, the one site recreation.gov was offering there was already booked. 1,623 of the 7,647 federal campgrounds in this country still keep at least some sites for whoever arrives first. Wilborn Creek (Group Camp) keeps none, and that’s a choice somebody made rather than a rule. I’m not asking you to run Wilborn Creek (Group Camp). I’m asking you to put it to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in writing: why is the share of first-come sites there zero, and what would a published minimum share cost? Please press for that minimum at the federal campgrounds you fund. The people who open these campgrounds, collect the fees and keep the water running are seasonal positions. At GS-5, base pay plus the government's own 36.25% benefit factor, one costs about $47,414 a year. One percent of the $13.3 billion the USS Gerald R. Ford cost to procure would pay for about 2,800 of them for a year. Both figures are the government's own (a Congressional Research Service report and an OPM pay table), and I’m glad to send them. Sent about Wilborn Creek (Group Camp) (Illinois) via campanac.com