Oak Bottom RV Campground

The facts that decide your trip

Max rig length

33 ft

Sites

22

Hookups

Dry Camping (no hookups)

Access

Drive-in

Nightly rate

$20–$30 / night

Season

Open year-round

Elevation

Not published

Dump station

Yes

Potable water

Yes

What is actually on site

• Boat rampOak Bottom boat launch, adjacent.
• Dog friendly
• Dump station
• Flush toilets
• Potable water
• Showers
• Swimming
• Fishing
• Cell service
• Generator hours restricted
• Food storage required

Nearest public camera

Whiskeytown Visitor Center — about 4.5 mi from the campground

Camera operated by National Park Service, Whiskeytown NRA

Frame refreshes about every 1 min · feed last verified 6 days ago

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

Facility info

Twenty-two dry RV spaces on asphalt beside the Oak Bottom boat launch at Whiskeytown Lake, run for the National Park Service by Whiskeytown Marinas LLC. No hookups, no picnic tables and no fire rings at the RV spaces — the Park Service's own environmental assessment describes it as a parking lot with no shade trees. What you do get is plumbing: flush toilets, coin-operated hot showers down at the beach, potable water, a free dump station for registered RV guests, and a campground store at the entrance. Tents are not allowed. Open year-round, booked directly through the concessioner rather than Recreation.gov.

Getting there

From Interstate 5 in Redding take the Highway 44 West exit toward downtown Redding and Eureka, then follow Highway 299 West toward Eureka. The Whiskeytown Visitor Center is about eight miles out of Redding; Oak Bottom is further west on the same highway. The final turn, in the Park Service's own words: turn left at the sign for Oak Bottom, then left again at the four-way intersection past the Oak Bottom Camp Store and NPS fire station. The address is 12485 State Highway 299 W, Whiskeytown, CA 96095. The Park Service does not publish an exact mileage to the Oak Bottom turnoff — only the eight miles to the Visitor Center. Third parties put Oak Bottom at roughly 13 to 15 miles from the I-5 junction. Give yourself half an hour from Redding and watch for the sign, which is easy to miss at highway speed. One thing worth taking seriously. The Park Service's own alerts page states that fatal accidents occur on Highway 299 within the park every single year. It is a fast, winding two-lane mountain highway carrying a lot of tourist traffic and a lot of boat trailers. Drive it accordingly, especially towing. Check in at the Campground Store from 2pm; if you are arriving after hours, call ahead on 530-359-2671. Buy your park entrance pass before or on arrival — the park is cashless, so bring a card. Potable water and a free dump station are both on site, so you can arrive empty and leave full. Redding is close enough that resupply is trivial: groceries, propane, hardware and an RV dealer are all inside twenty minutes back east on 299.

40.65051, -122.59297 · Driving directions

Photos of the area

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Local deep dive

Be clear about what this is before you book it: twenty-two striped spaces on asphalt next to the overflow boat parking. The Park Service's own environmental assessment says it plainly — 22 sites on asphaltic concrete, no shade trees, no hookups, and lacking the amenities present at the tent sites including picnic tables and fire rings. A Campendium reviewer put it less kindly, objecting to paying a $25 entrance fee to park in a blacktop lot. So why do people book it anyway? Because of what is within a two-minute walk. This is the closest RV camping to a boat ramp anywhere in the park, with a marina renting 16-foot fishing boats, 24-foot pontoons, 26-foot deck cruisers, kayaks and paddleboards year-round. There is a store selling ice, firewood and snacks. There are flush toilets and hot showers. And the pump-out is free if you are a registered RV guest — non-guests pay $15. For a boater with a self-contained rig, the trade is obvious. Bring shade. This is the single most useful thing on the page. The Park Service's camping table describes Oak Bottom RV in two words — "abundant sunshine" — and its campground regulations page recommends bringing a shade structure because the vegetation was moderately to severely burned in the 2018 Carr Fire. Replacement oaks were planted in autumn 2020 and are still saplings. One camper recorded three consecutive days over 100 degrees. Bring quarters. The hot showers are coin-operated and take quarters only, and they are down at the beach rather than in the RV lot. The free showers are the beach rinse showers, which is a different thing. Two rules that catch people. Generators are capped at 60 decibels and must be off by 10pm, with quiet hours until 6am. And there is no day pass at Whiskeytown — arrive without an annual pass and you are buying the seven-day vehicle pass at $25 whether you stay one night or six. Food storage is a legal requirement here, not a suggestion. The Superintendent's Compendium requires food, garbage and cooking equipment to be in a bear-resistant locker or out of sight inside a hard-sided vehicle. There are no lockers at the RV spaces, so your rig is the compliant storage.

Oak Bottom sits on the north shore of Whiskeytown Lake, and the whole place has to be understood through one event: the Carr Fire of July 2018. The fire started on Highway 299 near Carr Powerhouse Road, inside the park, when metal parts of a traveling vehicle scraped the pavement. It became the most destructive fire in National Park System history — 229,651 acres, and over 100 structures lost inside the park alone, including park residences, ten cabins at the Environmental School, boat docks and historic fruit trees dating from the 1850s. The Park Service says 97 percent of the recreation area burned; the San Francisco Chronicle reported 93 percent. Either figure means essentially all of it. What that means for a camper in 2026 is shade, or the lack of it. The Chronicle described a fire that burned right down to the water line at the Oak Bottom boat ramp, hills scraped clean to the soil, ridges full of blackened tree skeletons. The Park Service's current line is that decades will pass before tall trees return. Oak seedlings went in during autumn 2020. Meanwhile the regrowth has been remarkable in other ways — 202 previously unrecorded plant species and 256 rare plant populations have been documented since the fire. One caveat we cannot resolve for you: the Park Service's campground regulations page states that some sections of the campground remain closed due to the fire. That page was last updated in July 2024 and the concessioner's booking system flags no closure. Call 530-359-2269 if a specific loop matters to you. A fire ban is in effect as we write this. The concessioner's banner is unambiguous: no wood burning, no charcoal, propane only. The RV spaces have no fire rings regardless, so this bites hardest at the tent campground next door — but it also means the firewood on sale at the store is of no use to you. Two things make Whiskeytown genuinely different from Shasta Lake, half an hour north. Dogs are allowed on the hiking trails here, which is rare for a National Park Service unit — though never on the beaches, Oak Bottom Beach included. And the lake is held at a far more stable level than Shasta, so the shoreline you see in July is roughly the shoreline you see in October. Whiskeytown Falls, on the James K. Carr Trail, is a 3.4-mile round trip with 750 feet of climbing and is open. Crystal Creek Falls is the easy one — 0.4 miles each way and flat. The Oak Bottom Water Ditch Trail starts about 100 metres in from the highway turnoff and runs 2.7 miles along the lake's western arm.

Questions people ask

Where these facts come from

• National Park Service — Camping at Whiskeytown (site counts, fees, amenities) · checked 2026-08-31
• NPS — Campground Regulations (Carr Fire burn severity, shade structure advice, partial closure) · checked 2026-08-31
• NPS — Entrance fees, cashless park, no day pass · checked 2026-08-31
• NPS — Superintendent's Compendium (food storage, stay limits, occupancy) · checked 2026-08-31
• NPS — Oak Bottom Campground Redesign Environmental Assessment (asphalt lot, no shade trees) · checked 2026-08-31
• Whiskeytown Marinas LLC — camping rates, 33 ft limit, fire ban, free RV pump-out · checked 2026-08-31
• Whiskeytown Marinas — RV space booking page, generator and quiet-hours rules · checked 2026-08-31
• NPS — Pets at Whiskeytown (dogs on trails, banned on beaches) · checked 2026-08-31
• NPS — Carr Fire and ongoing recovery · checked 2026-08-31
• NPS — Oak Bottom Boat Launch amenities and cellular signal · checked 2026-08-31