Ellery Creek Campground

The facts that decide your trip

Max rig length

40 ft

Sites

19

Hookups

Dry Camping (no hookups)

Access

Drive-in

Nightly rate

$28 / night

Season

Apr 1 – Sep 12

Elevation

1085 ft

Dump station

No

Potable water

Yes

What is actually on site

• Shade canopy
• Dog friendly
• Vault toilets
• Potable water
• Swimming
• Fishing
• Picnic tables
• Fire rings
• Food storage required

Nearest public camera

Salt Creek · I-5 — about 6.7 mi from the campground

Camera operated by Caltrans District 2

Frame refreshes about every 4 min · feed last verified 6 days ago

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

Facility info

Nineteen single family sites terraced down a hillside where Ellery Creek runs into the McCloud Arm, roughly 15 miles east of Interstate 5 on Gilman Road. The Forest Service describes the campground as terraced so that all of the lower sites and some of the upper ones have lake views, and at high water the lower tier sits essentially at the waterline. Every site has a picnic table, a fire ring, a paved parking spur and a bear-proof locker. Vault toilets, no flush toilets, no showers, no hookups and no dump station. Season runs April 1 to September 12. Managed by Shasta Recreation Company under the Shasta-Trinity National Forest.

Getting there

From Interstate 5 take exit 698 — signed Gilman Road from the south, Salt Creek from the north — turn east and follow Gilman Road along the McCloud Arm. The campground entrance is on the right, between Moore Creek and Pine Point. The mileage is genuinely disputed and the Forest Service page contradicts itself: its header says 15 miles northeast of I-5 while its directions say approximately 11 miles down Gilman Road. Recreation.gov says 16. Two independent guides say 16 and 14. Cross-checked against the neighbours on the same road — Hirz Bay at 10, Dekkas Rock at 12 — and against Recreation.gov's own placement between Moore Creek and Pine Point, plan on 15 to 16 miles. Whatever the number, this is not a quick 15 miles. Campers on the same road consistently report about 30 minutes for the first 10 to Hirz Bay, a sustained 20 miles an hour, which tells you what the curves are like. Add another 15 to 20 minutes to reach Ellery Creek. Redding to the campground is roughly 50 to 55 minutes door to door. Inside the campground everything is paved — the loop road and every parking spur. Gilman Road itself is a paved two-lane forest road, but no source we could find documents its grades, width or towing character in detail, and at least one camper described the roads in as rough and the Forest Service signage as poorly labelled for closures. Take it slow, expect boat-trailer traffic on summer weekends, and do not count on turning a long rig around if you pick the wrong pullout. Arrive with empty holding tanks and full fresh water. There is no dump station here and the nearest is at Lakehead, back out on I-5.

40.91584, -122.24163 · Driving directions

Photos of the area

5 more photos

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Local deep dive

Nineteen sites is small enough that the per-site records matter more here than anywhere else on the arm, and Recreation.gov's own site notes do most of the work for you. Six sites are flagged "lake access": 010, 011, 012, 013, 014 and 016. Three of those — 010, 011 and 012 — also read "near water faucet and restroom," which makes them the practical picks. Site 012 is the only one whose note actually begins "Shady," and it is rated 40 ft. Sites 013, 014 and 016 begin "Sunny," which in a canyon that bakes through July and August is a warning, not a selling point. For length, the four sites above 30 feet are 010 (40 ft), 011 (35 ft), 012 (40 ft) and 019 (40 ft). Eight more are rated exactly 30 — no margin at all — and 001, 002, 017 and 018 top out at 20. If you are towing anything substantial, you are choosing from four sites, and they are the same four everyone else wants. Book on the six-month window. Two per-site cautions worth carrying with you. Recreation.gov flags site 008 as "difficult to back trailer into site." And a camper reported in June 2024 that site 011 will not take a trailer over 20 feet because of a retaining wall on the road — which directly contradicts Recreation.gov's 35 ft rating for that site. Nobody has resolved it. There is no camp host here, and it shows. Campers report two garbage cans for the whole campground and not emptied daily, overfilled trash lockers, and restrooms running out of paper. Bring your own supplies and pack your trash out. One reviewer in 2025 found the bear locker at site 019 unlockable because the key was broken. The most-repeated complaint by a wide margin is mosquitoes — May, June, July, it does not matter, and one camper said bug spray barely helped. Poison oak and blackberries grow inside the sites themselves, not just along the trails. Rattlesnakes have been reported twice in summer. Bears are around: a cub across the creek in July, large prints in August, and lockers at every site for a reason. On water: Recreation.gov lists water spigots and seven site records read "near water faucet," and campers have used them as recently as May 2026. But the Forest Service's own page says flatly that potable water is not available, and one camper in May 2021 found the pumps off. Treat a working tap as a bonus and arrive full.

Ellery Creek is the on-the-water one, and that is the whole case for it. Hirz Bay, four miles back, sits on a hilltop with the lake down a trail — a view campground. Ellery Creek is terraced right down toward the waterline, and at full pool the lower sites are at the water's edge. The Forest Service says all of the lower sites and some of the upper ones have lake views. The reason boaters book it is informal mooring. The Forest Service is specific: when the lake is at its highest, down to approximately 50 feet below full pool, boats can be moored on the shore within sight of the campground. Full pool is 1,067 feet, so that threshold sits at roughly 1,017 feet. Check the live lake level at the top of this page before you plan around it — below that elevation the mooring is gone and you are launching from Hirz Bay instead. What the water looks like at low levels is worth being honest about. Campers describe the walk down as rocky with many small stones, and at lower levels sticky, dense mud rather than a beach. One reviewer recommended floats simply to avoid the mud. At high water the reports flip completely — "went when the lake was high and we were right on the water." This is a campground whose character changes more with the lake level than almost any other on the arm. There is one paradox to know: at true full pool, within about three feet, the best sites are reportedly underwater. Ellery Creek itself passes through the campground on its way into the lake, and campers reference it in July and August, so it is not bone-dry in midsummer. Be aware that when the lake drops, campers often use "the creek" to mean the shrunken lake channel rather than Ellery Creek — the two get conflated in reviews. The other thing that makes this campground unusual: it is the only real family campground between Hirz Bay and McCloud Bridge. Dekkas Rock, Moore Creek and Pine Point are all group facilities — Dekkas Rock and Pine Point require a gate code arranged a week ahead. If you want a reservable family site on the upper McCloud Arm with room for a rig over 24 feet and you are not a group, your choices are Hirz Bay and Ellery Creek, and Ellery is the small quiet one. What you give up against Hirz Bay: flush toilets, a camp host, and being next to the ramp.

Questions people ask

Where these facts come from

• Shasta-Trinity National Forest — Ellery Creek Campground · checked 2026-08-31
• Recreation.gov — facility 232761, campground overview and mooring note · checked 2026-08-31
• Recreation.gov — site 010, 40 ft, lake access, near water faucet and restroom · checked 2026-08-31
• Recreation.gov — site 012, 40 ft, shady, lake access · checked 2026-08-31
• Recreation.gov — site 008, 30 ft, difficult to back trailer into site · checked 2026-08-31
• The Dyrt — camper reviews and carrier coverage · checked 2026-08-31
• Campendium — camper reviews, rig sizes and lake level notes · checked 2026-08-31
• California Data Exchange Center — Shasta Lake elevation, gauge SHA · checked 2026-08-31
• USFS — Shasta-Trinity Recreation Facilities Guide, the source of this campground's published elevation; its elevation column reports a small set of round, lake-referenced values across all Shasta Lake facilities rather than surveyed figures · checked 2026-09-01