Brandy Creek RV Campground

The facts that decide your trip

Max rig length

35 ft

Sites

15

Hookups

Dry Camping (no hookups)

Access

Drive-in

Nightly rate

$20 / night

Season

Open year-round

Elevation

Not published

Dump station

Yes

Potable water

Yes

What is actually on site

• Boat rampBrandy Creek boat launch, adjacent.
• Shade canopy
• Dog friendly
• Dump station
• Potable water
• Swimming
• Fishing
• Cell service
• Generator hours restricted
• Food storage required

Nearest public camera

Whiskeytown Visitor Center — about 2.8 mi from the campground

Camera operated by National Park Service, Whiskeytown NRA

Frame refreshes about every 1 min · feed last verified 6 days ago

Useful for road surface, smoke and haze — not for checking your site.

Facility info

Fifteen bookable RV spaces on asphalt above Brandy Creek Marina, on the south shore of Whiskeytown Lake, run directly by the National Park Service and booked through Recreation.gov. Fully self-contained rigs only — the Superintendent's Compendium requires motorhomes and trailers with built-in toilet and wastewater tanks, and no tents are permitted. There are no restrooms, no showers, no picnic tables and no fire grates anywhere in the campground. There is potable water and a dump station on site, both of which may be shut off periodically in winter. Recreation.gov describes partial shade from oak and pine. Open year-round, $20 a night.

Getting there

Recreation.gov gives the official route: from Interstate 5 in Redding, drive 10 miles west on Highway 299, turn left on Kennedy Memorial Drive and follow it 5.6 miles to Brandy Creek Marina, then take the marina road up to the campground. That is roughly 15.6 miles from the freeway; the Park Service describes the campground as 13.5 miles west of Redding, and Sacramento is about three and a half hours south. The route crosses Whiskeytown Dam on Kennedy Memorial Drive, which is the scenic part and also the part where people slow down unexpectedly. The campground sits above the marina on the south shore — campsitephotos calls it a hilltop, and the two asphalt lots are described on Recreation.gov as an upper lot and a lower lot. One thing to take seriously: the Park Service's alerts page states that fatal accidents occur on Highway 299 within the park every single year. It is a fast, winding two-lane mountain highway carrying heavy tourist and boat-trailer traffic. The first ten miles of your drive are on it. Check in is 1pm and check-out is noon per Recreation.gov, though one guide says 3pm and 2pm — go with Recreation.gov, since that is the system holding your booking. Arrive self-sufficient in the fullest sense. There are no toilets, no showers and no tables here. Potable water and the dump station are on site, but the Park Service warns both may be shut off periodically during winter, so in the cold months arrive with a full fresh tank and empty holding tanks rather than counting on filling here. The nearest alternative dump station in the park is at Oak Bottom, on the north shore. Buy your entrance pass before or on arrival — the park is cashless, so bring a card. Redding is 25 to 30 minutes back east for groceries, propane and ice.

40.61614, -122.57449 · Driving directions

Photos of the area

4 more photos

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Local deep dive

Read the self-contained rule before you book, because it is stricter than it sounds. The Superintendent's Compendium says camping here is limited to motorhomes and trailers equipped with fully self-contained toilet and wastewater devices, and that no tents are permitted. Recreation.gov puts it even more bluntly: sleeping is allowed only in self-contained vehicles. There are no restrooms in the campground at all — not vault, not flush. Your rig's own toilet is the only one. A van or truck camper without a built-in toilet and grey and black tanks does not qualify as written. Pop-up tent trailers are explicitly allowed if they do have them. What you get for that constraint is the cheapest developed site in this directory at $20, a genuinely quiet campground, and the best cell signal we have found anywhere on the lake — T-Mobile and AT&T both testing 5G excellent as recently as this summer. The rig-length picture needs care. Recreation.gov says 35 feet on every site record, with no per-site variation. Campers say otherwise. One found the layout too narrow even for a 22-foot trailer. Another with a 36-foot fifth wheel reported very few sites that would take it and moved to Oak Bottom instead. Only one reviewer has commented on levelness, calling the spaces wide and almost level, which is too thin to generalise from. Treat 35 feet as the paper ceiling. There is a site-count oddity worth knowing. Recreation.gov's availability grid shows 15 bookable sites numbered 1 to 15, but the same system holds live individual records for sites up to 32, and one independent guide describes 32 RV spaces on asphalt. We could not establish whether the higher-numbered spaces are closed, retired or simply out of the reservation inventory. If you want more choice than 15 sites, call the park on 530-246-1225 and ask. Two practical notes. If you run solar, the oak and pine cover that reviewers praise for shade is the same cover two others blamed for not charging their panels — pick your site accordingly. And campers report aggressive ants; one described colonies that would have been into the camper in minutes. Food storage is a legal requirement. With no lockers here, your rig is the compliant storage: everything out of sight, inside, unless it is in immediate use.

Brandy Creek RV is the quiet, cheap, no-facilities option on Whiskeytown's south shore, and its selling point is location rather than comfort. The campground sits right at Brandy Creek Marina, with the boat launch adjacent and Brandy Creek Beach a quarter mile away per Recreation.gov. The launch has a large lot with boat-trailer, bus and RV parking, accessible flush restrooms, drinking water and a fish-cleaning station — which is where you go, since the campground itself has none of those. The 2018 Carr Fire defines this landscape as it does the whole park. It started on Highway 299 near Carr Powerhouse Road when metal parts of a traveling vehicle scraped the pavement, and became the most destructive fire in National Park System history: 229,651 acres, 97 percent of the recreation area burned by the Park Service's count, more than 100 structures lost inside the park, eight deaths including three firefighters. The park closed entirely on 25 July 2018 and the fire was fully contained on 30 August. Recovery here has been slower to document than at Oak Bottom. The Brandy Creek Trail, which runs from Brandy Creek Beach up to the Brandy Creek Falls trailhead, reopened on 1 April 2022 — the Park Service's release said it was the first time since the Carr Fire. Brandy Creek Falls itself is the piece we cannot give you a clean answer on: the Park Service's trail page carries an "enter at your own risk" warning implying it is open, its Carr Fire page describes bridges, guardrails and the dirt trail itself washed out by post-fire rains, a 2022 release said the falls trail remained closed for repair work, and the current waterfalls index omits Brandy Creek Falls entirely. Call the park on 530-246-1225 before planning around it. The open waterfalls are worth the drive. Whiskeytown Falls on the James K. Carr Trail is 3.4 miles round trip with 750 feet of climb, rated strenuous, with a vault toilet at the trailhead. Crystal Creek Falls is the easy one — 0.4 miles each way and flat, and the closest to this campground. Boulder Creek Falls is 2.2 miles round trip from Mill Creek Road. Two Whiskeytown-wide points. Dogs are allowed in the campground and on the hiking trails here, which is rare for a National Park Service unit — but they are banned from Brandy Creek Beach, a quarter mile away, along with every other swim beach in the park. And a park-wide fire ban is currently in effect: no wood, no charcoal, propane only. That changes nothing at this campground, which has no fire grates in the first place. Whiskeytown is held at a far steadier level than Shasta Lake half an hour north, so the shoreline in October looks much like the shoreline in July.

Questions people ask

Where these facts come from

• Recreation.gov — facility 10047085, self-contained rule, 35 ft limit, directions, beach distance · checked 2026-08-31
• National Park Service — Camping at Whiskeytown (15 sites, $20, no toilets or showers) · checked 2026-08-31
• NPS — Superintendent's Compendium (self-contained requirement, no tents, stay limits) · checked 2026-08-31
• NPS — Campground Regulations (which rigs qualify) · checked 2026-08-31
• NPS — Entrance fees, cashless park · checked 2026-08-31
• NPS — Brandy Creek Boat Launch, accessible flush restrooms and fish-cleaning station · checked 2026-08-31
• The Dyrt — per-carrier cell reports and camper reviews · checked 2026-08-31
• Campendium — camper reviews on rig fit, solar and ants · checked 2026-08-31
• NPS — Brandy Creek Trail reopening, first time since the Carr Fire · checked 2026-08-31
• NPS — Carr Fire and ongoing recovery · checked 2026-08-31
• NPS — Pets at Whiskeytown (dogs on trails, banned on Brandy Creek Beach) · checked 2026-08-31