Moore Creek Campground

The facts that decide your trip

Max rig length

16 ft

Sites

13

Hookups

Dry Camping (no hookups)

Access

Drive-in

Nightly rate

$20–$160 / night

Season

May 10 – 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 6.6 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

A group campground on a hillside above the McCloud Arm of Shasta Lake, which the concessionaire also opens as individual family sites on an as-needed overflow basis. The group unit takes up to 90 people and 25 vehicles and is reservable on Recreation.gov. Every campsite has a picnic table, fire ring, tent pad, bear box and paved parking spur. Vault toilets and potable water — Moore Creek is one of the few campgrounds on this arm where the Forest Service confirms drinking water. No hookups, no showers, no dump station. Season runs May 10 to September 12. Group reservation holders must call for a gate code at least a week ahead.

Getting there

From Interstate 5 take exit 698 — Salt Creek from the north, Gilman Road from the south — turn east and follow Gilman Road along the McCloud Arm. Then pick a number, because the two official sources are far apart. The Forest Service says approximately 20 miles. Recreation.gov says 14. One guide says 15. The Forest Service also gives 20 miles for Pine Point, which is about three miles further up the same road by its own published coordinates — so the two cannot both be right. Recreation.gov's sequence along Gilman Road (Dekkas Rock 10, Hirz Bay 11, Moore Creek 14, Ellery Creek 16, Pine Point 18) is at least internally consistent with where the coordinates put things. We would plan on 14 to 16 miles and about 45 minutes from the freeway, and watch for the entrance on the right. Whatever the mileage, the time is the real number. Campers on this road consistently report about thirty minutes for the first ten miles to Hirz Bay — a sustained twenty miles an hour, which tells you what the curves are doing. No official source describes Gilman Road's surface or grade at all. What we can say is that Recreation.gov lists 30-foot rigs as permitted at Hirz Bay and 35 at McCloud Bridge further along the same road, which implies the road itself handles a large rig. The constraint here is the campsite, not the drive. Two calls before you leave. One to Shasta Recreation Company on 530-275-8113 for the gate code, at least a week out — without it you may be sitting outside a locked gate with no refund. One to confirm the rig length if you are over 16 feet. Arrive with empty holding tanks. There is no dump station here and the nearest is at Lakehead, back out on I-5. Fill your fresh water anyway, but Moore Creek is one of the few campgrounds on this arm where a tap is reliably reported.

40.88861, -122.22400 · Driving directions

Photos of the area

4 more photos

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Local deep dive

The single most important thing about booking Moore Creek has nothing to do with the campground: you must phone for a gate code at least a week before you arrive. Recreation.gov's wording is blunt — failure to do so could lead to a locked facility without access for a night or longer and no refund. That is Shasta Recreation Company on 530-275-8113. Three campgrounds on this arm work this way; Moore Creek, Pine Point and Dekkas Rock all sit behind a combination gate. There is a real gap in that rule, and we cannot close it for you. The notice is written for group reservation holders. Nothing published anywhere explains how someone in an overflow family site gets through the gate. If you are booking an individual site, ask about access on the same call. Moore Creek's practical advantage over its neighbours is water. The Forest Service states flatly that potable water is available here, Recreation.gov confirms drinking water, and CampsitePhotos includes a photograph of the water station. That is unusual on this arm — the Forest Service says there is none at Ellery Creek, none at Pine Point and none at McCloud Bridge, and at two of those the claim is disputed. Moore Creek's is not disputed by anyone. The rig limit is where it gets awkward. Recreation.gov's facility notice says an average maximum trailer size of 16 feet. The structured data on its own site record for the same campground says 30 feet. That is one booking system contradicting itself on one campground, and no source resolves it. Sixteen feet rules out most travel trailers; thirty would put Moore Creek in the same class as Hirz Bay. Call before you tow. On shade, Recreation.gov also disagrees with itself — the site record says full shade, the overview says partially shaded. The independent descriptions lean towards partial: oak and evergreen on a hillside. One rule that matters at a 90-person group camp: Recreation.gov posts "No Amplified Sound!" in the notices. If your group was planning a PA or a speaker stack, that is your answer. Finally, a caveat about everything you will read on this campground, including this page. The Dyrt, Campendium and Hipcamp all show zero reviews. We could not find a single first-hand camper narrative for Moore Creek. Site counts range from 12 to 14 across sources and no official count exists. This is a reservation-gated group camp that almost nobody writes about.

Moore Creek sits on the McCloud Arm, the middle of the three arms that fan north from Shasta Dam, on the road that also serves Hirz Bay, Dekkas Rock, Ellery Creek, Pine Point and McCloud Bridge. Ten miles east of the freeway the traffic noise stops entirely, which is the arm's main advantage over Antlers and Bailey Cove. Among its immediate neighbours, Moore Creek occupies a specific niche: it is the mid-sized group camp with water. Ninety people and 25 vehicles puts it between Dekkas Rock at 60 and Pine Point at 100. Its parking spurs are paved where Dekkas Rock's are explicitly unpaved. It is seasonal, May to September, where Dekkas Rock runs year-round with reservations. And unlike Ellery Creek and McCloud Bridge, which are first-come and walk-in, the group unit here is genuinely bookable in advance. The lake itself is the one thing nobody quantifies. Neither the Forest Service nor Recreation.gov publishes a distance to the water for Moore Creek, and unlike Ellery Creek — where the Forest Service explicitly says boats can be moored nearby at high water — no source states that mooring or beaching is permitted here. CampsitePhotos describes the campground as being on a hillside above the arm, and one aggregator reports campers noting a steep hill down to the lake as levels drop. Treat lake access as a walk of unknown length that grows through the summer, and check the live level at the top of this page. The nearest launch is Hirz Bay, about four miles south, which works to 95 feet of drawdown — respectable, though well short of the Jones Valley and Centimudi ramps on the other side of the lake at around 210 feet. Fire history is reassuring and specific. The 2018 Hirz Fire burned 46,150 acres near Lakehead, and the San Francisco Chronicle reported afterwards that none of the lakeside campgrounds at Shasta Lake was affected, naming McCloud Bridge, Pine Point, Ellery Creek, Moore Creek and Dekkas Rock as open and clear. The 2021 Salt Fire started in the Gilman Road corridor near the Salt Creek exit with evacuations along Gilman Road itself — but no source we found documents damage or closure at any of these campgrounds. The Forest Service currently lists Moore Creek as open with no alert against it. Two standing hazards the Forest Service does publish for this campground: bears frequent the area and food must be kept in the bear boxes provided at every site, and poison oak is abundant. Fire danger at Shasta Lake is currently rated High under the 2026 fire restrictions order, and a forest-wide alert warns of falling hazard trees.

Questions people ask

Where these facts come from

• Shasta-Trinity National Forest — Moore Creek Campground (group/family) · checked 2026-08-31
• Recreation.gov — facility 232763, gate code notice, 16 ft prose, bears and poison oak · checked 2026-08-31
• Recreation.gov — group site record 65662, 90 people / 25 vehicles / 30 ft structured data · checked 2026-08-31
• USFS — Hirz Bay Public Boat Ramp, nearest launch and drawdown limits · checked 2026-08-31
• CampsitePhotos — Moore Creek, water station photo and hillside description · checked 2026-08-31
• California's Best Camping — Moore Creek, ramp distance and facilities · checked 2026-08-31
• San Francisco Chronicle — Hirz Fire left Shasta Lake campgrounds unaffected · checked 2026-08-31
• USFS — Shasta-Trinity alerts, 2026 fire restrictions and falling hazard trees · 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