McCloud Bridge Campground

The facts that decide your trip

Max rig length

35 ft

Sites

14

Hookups

Dry Camping (no hookups)

Access

Drive-in

Nightly rate

$28–$56 / night

Season

Apr 1 – Oct 31

Elevation

1085 ft

Dump station

No

Potable water

Yes

What is actually on site

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

Nearest public camera

Lakehead · I-5 — about 7.5 mi from the campground

Camera operated by Caltrans District 2

Frame refreshes about every 5 min · feed last verified 6 days ago

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

Facility info

Fourteen sites — 11 single and 3 double — at the very top of the McCloud Arm, about 600 feet from the McCloud Bridge and roughly 17 to 20 miles east of Interstate 5 on Gilman Road. It is the last campground on the road. The Forest Service describes it as an old ranch site set among fruit trees, sweet peas and berries, and calls it a very popular campground for easy lake access. Every site has a picnic table, a raised fire ring, a tent pad, a bear box and a paved parking spur, with brick pavers around the site furniture to provide an accessible surface. Vault toilets, no showers, no hookups, no dump station and no camp host. First-come, first-served only — there are no advance reservations. Season runs April 1 to October 31. Managed by Shasta Recreation Company under the Shasta-Trinity National Forest.

Getting there

From Interstate 5 take exit 698 — Salt Creek from the north, Gilman Road from the south — turn east and follow Gilman Road all the way out along the McCloud Arm. McCloud Bridge is the last campground on the road, past Hirz Bay, Dekkas Rock, Ellery Creek, Moore Creek and Pine Point. The mileage is disputed between the two official sources. Recreation.gov says 17 miles. The Forest Service says approximately 20, and its own day use area page says about 19. Plan on 17 to 20 and give yourself an hour from the freeway. For calibration, campers report about 30 minutes for the first 10 miles to Hirz Bay — a sustained 20 miles an hour, which tells you what the curves are doing. Redding to the campground is about 42 miles and comfortably over an hour. The campground entrance sits roughly 600 feet from the McCloud Bridge itself. Gilman Road becomes Fenders Ferry Road at or near the bridge, so do not be alarmed when the name changes on your map. One honest gap: no source we could find — official, review or forum — documents Gilman Road's surface condition, width, grades or towing character over the full 20 miles. Inside the campground the roads and parking spurs are paved. Beyond that, and given the unresolved rig-length question below, we would not tow anything long out here without calling the ranger station at 530-275-1587 first. Arrive with a full fresh-water tank and empty holding tanks. There is no dump station on the arm; the nearest is at Lakehead, back out on I-5. Bring firewood — there is no camp host selling it. And set up the Recreation.gov app with a payment method loaded before you leave cell coverage, because you will not have any when you arrive.

40.93590, -122.24500 · Driving directions

Photos of the area

3 more photos

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Local deep dive

Fourteen sites and no reservations makes this the one campground on the McCloud Arm where showing up is the plan. There is no booking window to win and no waiting list — you drive out, you look, you claim, you pay. That is either the appeal or the dealbreaker, and after a 17-to-20-mile drive with no cell service to check ahead, it is worth knowing which one it is for you before you leave the freeway. Recreation.gov's numbering will confuse you at the kiosk. The booking system splits the sites into "Double 1" through "Double 3" and "Standard 1" through "Standard 11" rather than running 1 to 14, while the photo archives and the posts on the ground appear to number straight through 1 to 14. Nobody publishes the mapping between the two. Read the post, not the app. Site-level detail is genuinely thin here — this campground has almost no camper-generated content online, and none of the 14 Recreation.gov site records carries a length, surface, shade or accessibility field. What we have is one site visit reporting favourites at sites 1, 2, 4 and 5, all sites shaded well by large oaks, moderate privacy where you see your neighbours but do not hear them, and sites large enough for an eight-person tent or several small ones. Every site overlooks the lake — some partial views, some lakefront. The Forest Service guidance is that the most scenic sites are on the lake and river side of the loop. Two things to bring because nobody will sell them to you. Firewood: there is no camp host. And water: Recreation.gov lists vault restrooms and water spigots, one camper confirmed clean bathrooms and working water in May 2021, but the Forest Service's own page says flatly that potable water is not available at this site. That is not boilerplate — the same agency writes "potable water is available" for Moore Creek, Dekkas Rock and Bailey Cove. Arrive full. The hazards are the standard Shasta foothill set plus one specific to here. Recreation.gov posts poison oak as abundant throughout the forest and requires food and scented toiletries in the bear lockers. Rattlesnakes are reported active in summer. And the canyon funnels wind — a site visit noted it gets windy in summer, which is worth thinking about for awnings and tarps. One camper found the bear boxes full of other people's trash and the cans overflowing, which is what happens without a host. The rig-length question is unresolved and we will not pretend otherwise. Recreation.gov's own text says about 35 feet; a legacy field on the same record says 16. See the FAQ.

McCloud Bridge is where the lake stops being a lake. You are at the top of the arm, right where the McCloud River comes in, and that single fact drives most of what makes this campground different. When Shasta draws down through late summer, the down-arm campgrounds are left looking at a widening band of red mudflat. Here the river is still running through. A camper in May 2021 put it exactly: with the water low, "the only water flowing is the McCloud creek, so it is hard to be in the water if you don't want to be pushed away." That is worth reading twice — the water stays, but it becomes a current rather than a swimming hole. A local guide says the same thing more kindly: even when lake levels drop, campers still get riverside camping. There is a counterweight, from a Google reviewer: the campground is close to the shore when the lake is within about 20 feet of full pool, implying the walk lengthens below that. Check the live lake level at the top of this page. The other thing people come out here for is shore fishing, and this is where the sourcing gets thin enough to be honest about. A single site-visit guide reports that large brown trout migrate through this section of the lake heading for upstream spawning grounds, that 15 or 20 people fish the shoreline for trout on summer weekends, and that the same guide calls it the best spot on the lake for shore fishing, with fall as prime season. We could not corroborate any of that in an angler forum or a published fishing report, so treat it as one source's observation rather than established fact. What is not in dispute is the geography — you are at a river mouth, and river mouths hold fish. The history is real and documented. The Forest Service says the campground sits on an old ranch site set among fruit trees, sweet peas and berries. That is the entirety of the official record — no source names the ranch, its owners, its dates, or even which fruit the trees bear. The brick pavers around each site's furniture, which the Forest Service lists as an accessibility feature rather than a historic one, give the loop a slightly built-up, tended feel that no other campground on the arm has. Adjacent to the campground is the McCloud Bridge Day Use Area, part of the same facility: five picnic units, a vault toilet, no potable water, $5 per vehicle per day, open year-round. It is hand-launch only — good for a kayak or paddleboard, no ramp. The nearest trailered launch is Hirz Bay, 7 to 8 miles back. Against the rest of the arm: Hirz Bay is the big one with the ramp and flush toilets, Ellery Creek is the on-the-water one with 19 reservable sites, and Dekkas Rock, Moore Creek and Pine Point are group facilities. McCloud Bridge is the far one, the small one, the tent one, and the only one you cannot book.

Questions people ask

Where these facts come from

• Shasta-Trinity National Forest — McCloud Bridge Campground · checked 2026-08-31
• Recreation.gov — facility 10145702, first-come rules, Scan & Pay and iron ranger · checked 2026-08-31
• Shasta-Trinity National Forest — McCloud Bridge Day Use Area · checked 2026-08-31
• USDA Forest Service — how Scan & Pay works, including offline payment · checked 2026-08-31
• The Dyrt — camper review and carrier coverage · checked 2026-08-31
• Campendium — 16 ft max trailer length attribute · checked 2026-08-31
• USFS — Hirz Bay Public Boat Ramp, nearest trailered launch · 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