Lakeshore East Campground

The facts that decide your trip

Max rig length

45 ft

Sites

25

Hookups

Dry Camping (no hookups)

Access

Drive-in

Nightly rate

$28–$95 / night

Season

Open year-round

Elevation

1100 ft

Dump station

No

Potable water

Yes

What is actually on site

• Shade canopy
• Dog friendly
• Pull-through
• Flush toilets
• Potable water
• Swimming
• Fishing
• ADA accessible
• Picnic tables
• Fire rings
• Cell service

Nearest public camera

Antlers Bridge · I-5 — about 0.9 mi from the campground

Camera operated by Caltrans District 2

Frame refreshes about every 5 min · feed last verified 59 minutes ago

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

Facility info

Twenty-three sites plus two yurts on the shore of the Sacramento Arm, partly shaded by oak and pine, with an undergrowth of grass and raspberry bushes giving some privacy between sites. Open year-round, 24 hours a day, and it takes walk-ins all year. Several sites overlook the water directly. There are no hookups, no dump station and no showers, but there are flush toilets including accessible ones, and a seasonal camp host who gets consistently good reviews. The two yurts are the only public yurts on Shasta Lake.

Getting there

From I-5 take exit 702, Lakeshore Drive / Antlers Road, at Lakehead. Go west, under the overpass, then turn left onto Lakeshore Drive and follow it about 1.3 miles to the entrance on your left. Roughly 22 to 25 miles north of Redding, about 25 to 30 minutes. Note that Recreation.gov's own directions say 2.5 miles, which is wrong — both the Forest Service and the concessionaire say 1.3, and 2.5 miles puts you at the Sugarloaf ramp instead. Paved two-lane the whole way, including the parking spurs. No gravel, no grade, no switchbacks, no weight limits reported by anyone. For a 30-foot rig this is a comfortable campground. A 40-foot coach with a tow has done site 10 and a 31-foot Class C spent two weeks in site 15. Everything is back-in except sites 10 and 12, the two pull-throughs — ask for those if you would rather not back in. The one hazard anybody documents is overhead, not underneath. A camper in a 40-foot coach reports untrimmed branches over the campground's main interior road scratching the motorhome roof. The same oak and pine canopy that gives you the shade is the problem. Go slowly and have someone watch your roofline and air conditioner shrouds. Lakehead has a small grocery, a laundromat and a pub. The Antlers boat ramp is half a mile east of the exit — the opposite direction from the campground.

40.87224, -122.38754 · Driving directions

Photos of the area

Local deep dive

The two yurts are the reason to know this campground, and they are not interchangeable. Both sit in Loop 2 on the lakeside, both overlook the water. Site 020 has two full-size beds in pine furniture, sleeps four, and takes a 45-foot vehicle. Site 022 sleeps five on a futon plus a twin-over-full bunk, sits next to a historic stone fireplace, and is the closest to both the water tap and the restroom — the better choice with kids. Site 020 is the better choice for a couple or if you are towing. What nobody tells you until you arrive: there is no heat, no air conditioning and no electricity inside either yurt, and linens are not provided. Bring all your own bedding and a lantern. In July and August, when Lakehead averages over 90°F, an unpowered canvas yurt is a real planning decision. Dogs are not allowed inside the yurts, though they are fine outside in a tent or kennel. Yurt check-out is noon, not the 2pm campsite check-out. And this one has actually cost people their booking: site 020 requires you to call 530-275-8113 a week ahead to get the entry code. A camper in June 2025 missed that detail and could not get into the yurt they had paid for. Put the call in your calendar the day you book. For regular sites, the consensus pick is 15 — spacious, good view, easy lake access, and one camper spent fourteen nights there. Site 17 is a double for sixteen people, described officially as sunny and mostly secluded, which is a useful reminder that shade and privacy do not always come together here. Site 13 is the shady lakeside one. Sites 10 and 12 are the only two pull-throughs in the campground. Site 11 is wheelchair accessible. Avoid site 2 — reviewers report sites too close together, poison oak everywhere and no lake access. The raspberry-and-grass undergrowth in the official description is real, and so is the poison oak hiding in it, which Recreation.gov posts as an official notice. Bears too, with bear-proof containers on site. Two more honest notes. Restroom cleanliness reviews swing wildly from spotless to disgusting depending on when you catch it. And two separate 2024 campers arrived to find their reserved site already occupied — screenshot your confirmation.

Lakeshore East sits directly on the shore, and that is genuinely different from Antlers up the road, which sits on a bluff with no way down. Several sites here overlook the water and a few have real access to it. But there is no sand beach anywhere, and what "lake access" means changes completely with the lake level. At full pool it is a short walk over rock. In late August 2026 the lake sat at 991.5 feet — 75 feet below full pool and dropping about 4.7 feet a week — and at that level you are looking down roughly 75 vertical feet of exposed, steep, rocky bank. Campers describe it accurately: difficult to get into the water, no shore, a rocky embankment, and one who simply did not attempt the scramble. Treat low-water lake access here as a view plus a hard climb, and plan to moor a boat rather than swim from camp. The ramp situation flips at almost exactly the level the lake is at now. Antlers, two miles east, runs four lanes down to 75 feet of drawdown and then closes outright. Sugarloaf, 1.7 miles further west on the same road you are already on, only opens once the lake is past 75 feet down and works from there to 160. So at the current level, Sugarloaf is your ramp and it is closer than Antlers. Check the live lake level on this page before you tow. On noise, there are three sources and they are worth separating. Freight trains run along the Sacramento Arm several times a day and night and are the most intrusive. I-5 is 1.3 miles east, so freeway noise is present but attenuated — some campers rate the site five out of five for quiet, others one. The third source is other campers: pounding live music and loud parties both show up in recent reviews. For boaters: the Forest Service golden mussel order runs December 2025 to December 2027 across Shasta Lake and its ramps. Clean, drain and dry is mandatory, certification is required to launch, and motorized craft need a mussel fee sticker. Fines run to $5,000.

Questions people ask

Where these facts come from

• Shasta-Trinity National Forest — Lakeshore East Campground · checked 2026-08-31
• Recreation.gov — facility 232758, yurt rules and per-site limits · checked 2026-08-31
• Recreation.gov — Yurt site 020 · checked 2026-08-31
• Recreation.gov — Yurt site 022 · checked 2026-08-31
• USFS — Sugarloaf Public Boat Ramp, low-water drawdown range · checked 2026-08-31
• The Dyrt — crowd-verified carrier coverage · checked 2026-08-31