Oak Bottom Tent Campground

The facts that decide your trip

Max rig length

Not published

Sites

94

Hookups

Dry Camping (no hookups)

Access

Walk-in

Nightly rate

$30–$35 / 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.
• Shade canopy
• Dog friendly
• Dump station
• Flush toilets
• Potable water
• Showers
• Swimming
• Fishing
• Picnic tables
• Fire rings
• Cell service
• Generator hours restricted
• Food storage required

Nearest public camera

Whiskeytown Visitor Center — about 4.4 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

Ninety-four walk-in tent sites on the shore of Whiskeytown Lake, run for the National Park Service by Whiskeytown Marinas LLC. This is the only campground actually on the Whiskeytown lakeshore, and seventeen of its sites sit directly on the water where you can moor a boat at your campsite. Every site has a picnic table, a fire ring and a bear-proof food locker. Two restroom buildings with flush toilets, coin-operated hot showers at the beach, potable water, a dump station and a campground store. No RVs, no trailers, and no sleeping in vehicles — sites are reached on foot from the parking areas. 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. 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 with heavy tourist and boat-trailer traffic. Then plan the last 500 feet, because that part is on foot. Check in at the Campground Store from 2pm, park in the lot serving your loop, and carry or barrow your gear in. If your site is one of the further or steeper ones, that is two trips with a loaded wheelbarrow, and the return leg is uphill. Pack accordingly: fewer, heavier-but-fewer loads beat many small ones. Buy your park entrance pass before or on arrival — the park is cashless, so bring a card. Bring quarters for the showers. And if the fire ban is still in effect, do not bother buying firewood at the store. Redding is twenty minutes back east on 299 for groceries, ice, propane and anything you forgot.

40.64920, -122.59050 · Driving directions

Photos of the area

4 more photos

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Local deep dive

The whole campground turns on one distinction: shoreline sites versus everything else. Seventeen sites are on the water. The Park Service's environmental assessment confirms they allow boat mooring, which means you can beach a boat at your campsite — a thing almost no developed campground anywhere offers. They cost $35 instead of $30, they are the sites with real shade because the lakeside vegetation survived the Carr Fire, and they are the ones people return for year after year. One camper complained about exactly that, saying it feels unfair that the same people get the waterfront spots every year. The other roughly 77 sites are a different experience. The Park Service's own assessment says sites sit 25 to 50 feet apart with minimal privacy, and identifies overcrowding and user conflict as reasons it wants to redesign the place. Campers back this up: the non-shoreline sites are close together, and the table, fire ring and bear box can sit in full sun all day, which one reviewer called brutal for afternoon food prep on a hot day. Another logged three straight days over 100 degrees. Bring a shade structure — the Park Service itself recommends it. Walk-in means walk-in, and people get caught. One camper wrote that they camp out of a 4Runner, did not realise, and had to go buy a tent. Sleeping in vehicles is not allowed. The Park Service gives the walk distance as 10 to 500 feet from the parking areas; campsitephotos says 50 to 250. Either way, some of it is a steep downhill trail — loaded on the way in, uphill loaded on the way out. Wheelbarrows are provided; grab one early. The most consistent complaint in the whole review corpus is restroom capacity. Two restroom buildings serve up to 94 sites at six people each, and campers describe lines after dark and again early morning. The showers are coin-operated, quarters only, and they are down at the beach — not in the campground. Free showers means the beach rinse showers, which is a different thing. Bear lockers are at every site, and using them is a legal requirement under the Superintendent's Compendium, not a courtesy. Since your vehicle may be up to 500 feet away and you cannot sleep beside it, the locker is your only practical compliant storage. Off-season is a completely different campground. One camper in early October counted three occupied sites out of ninety-odd.

Oak Bottom is the only campground on the shores of Whiskeytown Lake — the Park Service says so in exactly those words — and that single fact is most of why people put up with the rest. The rest has to be understood through the Carr Fire of July 2018. It 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, more than 100 structures lost inside the park alone, including park residences, ten Environmental School cabins, boat docks, footbridges 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 way, essentially all 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 filled with blackened tree skeletons for miles. The Park Service's current line is that decades will pass before tall trees return. Oak seedlings were planted here in autumn 2020. That is why the Park Service can still describe the waterfront sites as having ample shade while the interior loops bake — the lakeside vegetation came through, the hillside vegetation did not. One caveat we cannot resolve: 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 particular loop matters to you. A fire ban is in effect as we write. The concessioner's banner reads: no wood burning, no charcoal, propane only. Every tent site here has a fire ring, so unlike the RV lot next door this genuinely changes your evening. Check before you travel — these bans come and go by season. Two things make Whiskeytown different from Shasta Lake, half an hour north. Dogs are allowed on the hiking trails, rare for a National Park Service unit, though never on Oak Bottom Beach or any other swim beach. And Whiskeytown is held at a far more stable level than Shasta, so a shoreline site in July is still a shoreline site in October. Close by: 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. Oak Bottom Beach has 20 picnic tables, 13 grills, drinking water, accessible fishing piers and a summer store. Whiskeytown Falls on the James K. Carr Trail is 3.4 miles round trip with 750 feet of climb; Crystal Creek Falls is the flat, easy one at 0.4 miles each way.

Questions people ask

Where these facts come from

• National Park Service — Camping at Whiskeytown (94 sites, shade note, amenities) · checked 2026-08-31
• NPS — Campground Regulations (only campground on the lakeshore; Carr Fire burn severity) · checked 2026-08-31
• NPS — Oak Bottom Campground Redesign Environmental Assessment (17 mooring sites, 25–50 ft spacing, 10–500 ft walk-in) · checked 2026-08-31
• NPS — Entrance fees, cashless park, no day pass · checked 2026-08-31
• NPS — Superintendent's Compendium (tent-only designation, food storage, stay limits) · checked 2026-08-31
• Whiskeytown Marinas LLC — tent and shoreline rates, fire ban, site counts · checked 2026-08-31
• Whiskeytown Marinas — campground FAQ (check-in, pet fee, fire pits, no WiFi) · checked 2026-08-31
• The Dyrt — camper reviews, walk-in and wheelbarrow reports · 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