Nelson Point Campground

The facts that decide your trip

Max rig length

16 ft

Sites

8

Hookups

Dry Camping (no hookups)

Access

Drive-in

Nightly rate

$20–$110 / night

Season

Jun 2 – Sep 12

Elevation

1085 ft

Dump station

No

Potable water

No

What is actually on site

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

Nearest public camera

Salt Creek · I-5 — about 0.4 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

Eight sites on the Salt Creek inlet off the Sacramento Arm, about a mile west of Interstate 5 — the closest developed campground to the freeway on this part of the lake. It runs as a hybrid: individual family sites early in the season, then group rental only through the summer, with Recreation.gov listing a single bookable group unit rather than per-site inventory. Every site has a picnic table, a grill or stove, a fire ring, a tent pad, a bear box and a paved parking spur. Vault toilets, and the Forest Service states plainly that potable water is not available. No hookups, no showers, no dump station and no boat ramp. Gated — group reservation holders must call for the combination a week ahead.

Getting there

This is the easy one. From Interstate 5 take exit 698, signed Salt Creek/Gilman Road. The Forest Service puts the campground approximately one mile west of the freeway, then half a mile on Conflict Point Road. Note the direction, because it is the opposite of most campgrounds on this exit. Gilman Road runs east from exit 698 to the whole McCloud Arm — Hirz Bay, Dekkas Rock, Ellery Creek, Moore Creek, Pine Point, McCloud Bridge. Gregory Creek runs four miles north on Salt Creek Road. Nelson Point goes west. If you find yourself climbing into a canyon you have gone the wrong way. Recreation.gov describes the route slightly differently — from Redding, I-5 to Gilman Road/Gregory Creek Road, west to the Salt Creek exit, then north to Conflict Point Road, about half a mile to the campground. Same destination, and both agree the final leg is Conflict Point Road and that the whole thing is roughly a mile off the freeway. No source describes Conflict Point Road's surface, width or grade. We looked. The only rig-suitability signal we have is the 16-foot trailer limit and one aggregator's note that this is for small RVs only. Do not read the short distance as meaning big rigs are welcome — the sites are the constraint. Get the gate code first if you are booking the group. Shasta Recreation Office, 530-275-8113, at least a week before you arrive. Bring all your drinking water. The Forest Service and Recreation.gov agree there is none here, and that is not one of the district's disputed cases. There is no dump station either; one guide names a private RV park about a mile north as the nearest, unverified. Bear boxes are at every site and food must be in them.

40.84933, -122.34529 · Driving directions

Photos of the area

3 more photos

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Local deep dive

Nelson Point is one of only three campgrounds on Shasta Lake that the Forest Service describes as operating on an as-needed-for-overflow basis, alongside Moore Creek and Pine Point. In practice that means it changes character with the season, and the two official sources do not agree on when. Recreation.gov says it is open for walk-ins from April 1 to May 13, then group rental by reservation from May 13 to September 11, and that individual family reservations are not accepted during the group season unless you book the whole campground. The Forest Service's own page gives the season as June 2 to September 12. Those cannot both be right. If you are planning a shoulder-season walk-in, call Shasta Recreation Company on 530-275-8113 before you drive. The group capacity is disputed too: 60 people on both Forest Service sources, 75 on Recreation.gov. And the site count ranges from 8 to 10 depending who you ask, with no source publishing individual site numbers at all. We have gone with the Forest Service's 8. Two things here are not disputed and both matter. There is no drinking water — the Forest Service and Recreation.gov agree, unusually for this district. And there is a locked gate: group reservation holders must contact the Shasta Recreation Office at least a week before arrival for the combination. What makes Nelson Point genuinely distinctive is how close it is. About a mile west of exit 698, then half a mile on Conflict Point Road. That is the shortest drive from the freeway of any developed campground on this stretch — Gregory Creek is four miles up the canyon from the same exit, Antlers and Lakeshore East are a mile off exit 702. For a late arrival, or for anyone who wants to be camped before dark after a long drive, that is worth real money. The obvious question is what a mile from Interstate 5 sounds like at 2am, and here we have to be straight with you: nobody has said. There are no reviews of this campground anywhere. The Dyrt has none, Campendium has none, Hipcamp has none, CampsitePhotos has neither photos nor reviews, and we found no forum or blog trip report. We can tell you the distance; we cannot tell you the noise. One thing the reviews vacuum does not cover is cell signal, where The Dyrt has genuine crowd-verified carrier data — T-Mobile excellent on 5G from four users, Verizon some coverage from seven, AT&T possible from fourteen. That is real reporting, and being a mile from the freeway is the likely reason. Poison oak is officially abundant here, in Recreation.gov's own words, and bear boxes are provided at every site because food must be kept in them.

Nelson Point sits on the Salt Creek inlet off the Sacramento Arm — the busiest and most developed arm of Shasta Lake, and the one Interstate 5 runs alongside. Its neighbours on this arm are Antlers, Lakeshore East and Gregory Creek; the McCloud Arm campgrounds are a different world reached by turning east instead of west at the same exit. Among them Nelson Point is the small, cheap, spartan one. Vault toilets where Antlers, Lakeshore East and Gregory Creek all have flush. No water where they have it. A 16-foot rig ceiling where Antlers and Lakeshore East take 30. And the smallest group capacity of the lake's group camps at 60, against Moore Creek's 90 and Pine Point's 100 — and the cheapest, at $110 to $120 against $160 or more. Lake access is thin on documentation. No source publishes a distance from the sites to the waterline at full pool. One guide states plainly that when water levels are low the campground is a long way from the lake, which is the only direct statement we found. The Forest Service's Recreation Facilities Guide puts the campground at 1,085 feet against a full pool of 1,067 — about eighteen feet above a full lake, consistent with being near the water when full and a long walk down when drawn down. That elevation is itself disputed, with three sources giving 1,085, 1,100 and 1,115. Mooring and beaching are not addressed anywhere. The Salt Fire of 2021 started essentially at this interchange. It ignited on 30 June from hot material falling off a vehicle on Interstate 5, in the Gilman Road area near the Salt Creek exit, and burned 12,660 acres before containment on 19 July, destroying 41 structures. Evacuations covered residents east of I-5 in Lakehead including Gilman Road, Gregory Creek Road and Antlers Road, and the Forest Service closed the surrounding area to recreation. Here is the geography that matters: the fire started on the east side of the freeway. Nelson Point is on the west side. No source we found names this campground as burned, damaged or closed — but the blanket recreation closure would plausibly have covered it, and nobody documents the site-level outcome either way. We are not going to tell you it was untouched. The 2018 Hirz and Delta fires both burned in this general region, the Hirz on the McCloud Arm opposite and the Delta from an ignition a few miles north near Lamoine. Neither source connects either fire to Nelson Point. Campfires are currently permitted. Nelson Point is named in Exhibit A of the 2026 fire restrictions order, running July through December 2026, which prohibits fires outside listed developed sites. Camping in a developed recreation site is capped at 30 days per calendar year, and the mussel prohibition covering Shasta Lake requires a clean, drain and dry protocol before you launch anywhere.

Questions people ask

Where these facts come from

• Shasta-Trinity National Forest — Nelson Point Campground (group/family) · checked 2026-08-31
• Recreation.gov — facility 232764, walk-in and group seasons, gate code, poison oak · checked 2026-08-31
• USFS — Recreation Facilities Guide, Shasta-Trinity NF (8 sites, 16 ft, elevation) · checked 2026-08-31
• USFS — Antlers Public Boat Ramp, nearest launch and the Sugarloaf handover at 75 ft · checked 2026-08-31
• The Dyrt — crowd-verified per-carrier cell coverage · checked 2026-08-31
• California's Best Camping — Salt Creek inlet, low-water distance to the lake · checked 2026-08-31
• USFS — 2026 Fire Restrictions Forest Order 14-26-07, Nelson Point named in Exhibit A · checked 2026-08-31
• USFS — Forest-wide camping stay limits · checked 2026-08-31
• Salt Fire 2021 — ignition near the Salt Creek exit, evacuations east of I-5 · checked 2026-08-31
• California Data Exchange Center — Shasta Lake elevation, gauge SHA · checked 2026-08-31