Upper Jones Valley Campground

The facts that decide your trip

Max rig length

16 ft

Sites

8

Hookups

Dry Camping (no hookups)

Access

Drive-in

Nightly rate

$28 / night

Season

Not published

Elevation

1100 ft

Dump station

No

Potable water

No

What is actually on site

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

Nearest public camera

Fawndale · I-5 — about 4.7 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

Eight single sites on unpaved parking spurs above the Pit River Arm of Shasta Lake, a short way uphill from Lower Jones Valley. Vault toilet, picnic table and campfire ring at every site. The Forest Service states that potable water is not available. There are no hookups, no showers and no dump station, and no Recreation.gov listing — this campground has never been reservable. It runs on an as-needed basis as overflow for Lower Jones Valley, first-come and first-served, and the Forest Service currently lists it as closed.

Getting there

Upper Jones Valley sits just uphill from Lower Jones Valley, and the drive is the same until the last few hundred yards. Confirm the campground is actually open before you make it — see the closure notice at the top of this page. The Forest Service route: from I-5 exit 687, take Old Oregon Trail for 3 miles, then Bear Mountain Road for 8.5 miles to the Dry Creek Road junction, then left roughly 2 miles to the campgrounds. It describes the area as 9 miles east of Shasta Lake City. Recreation.gov, writing about the neighbouring facilities, gives a different version: 15 miles north of Redding, exit at Oasis Road, right at the stop sign about 3 miles, right on Bear Mountain Road about 5 miles, left at the stop sign, then right on Jones Valley Road. The two disagree on the Bear Mountain Road distance and on whether the final road is Dry Creek Road or Jones Valley Road. They are describing the same drive; the last stretch changes name. Allow 40 to 50 minutes from Redding. Bear Mountain Road is the long connector and the part that matters. A camper who stayed at this campground specifically noted there were no dirt roads at all on the way in, which is the most direct evidence we have on the approach. Separately, The Dyrt carries a rough-road warning for Lower Jones Valley next door and suggests large RVs check with the Forest Service. Given this campground's 16-to-25-foot site limit, the road will not be your constraint — the sites will. Come fully self-sufficient. The Forest Service says there is no potable water here, there is no dump station, and no source names the nearest one. Bring drinking water for the whole stay, a hard-sided food container, and cash — with the campground unlisted on Recreation.gov and cell signal effectively absent, app payment is not something to rely on.

40.73008, -122.23002 · Driving directions

Local deep dive

Read the closure notice at the top of this page before you plan anything around Upper Jones Valley. The Forest Service flags it as closed with hours listed as "open as needed," and the concessionaire describes it as an overflow campground — it opens when Lower Jones Valley fills, which in practice means summer weekends and holidays, if at all. There is no published reopening date and no Recreation.gov listing to check availability against. One phone call to 530-275-1587 saves you a 45-minute drive. If it is open, here is what you are getting. Eight single sites, unpaved parking spurs, a vault toilet, and a picnic table and fire ring at each site. That is the whole facility. The unpaved spurs are the clearest physical difference from Lower Jones Valley just downhill, which has paved spurs and tent pads. Water is the thing to get right, because the sources disagree and the disagreement runs the wrong way. The Forest Service's own page for this campground states plainly that potable water is not available. The concessionaire says there are water spigots. Campendium reports a drinking water spigot, and Hipcamp lists potable water as available. Three sources contradict the land manager. We publish "no water" because that is the conservative reading and the land manager's own statement — arrive with everything you need and treat a working tap as luck. Lower Jones Valley definitely has water. Bear lockers are the same story in miniature: the concessionaire lists them, the Forest Service does not. Recreation.gov's guidance for every Jones Valley facility is that all food must be kept in approved containers, so bring a hard-sided container or plan to store food in your vehicle. Size matters here more than anywhere else in the cluster. Sixteen feet is the Forest Service's number, twenty-five is the concessionaire's. Even the generous figure rules out most travel trailers. A camper who stayed described the place as clean and peaceful but noted a party spot about half a mile down the road with shouting and engine noise at odd hours. There is exactly one substantive camper review of this campground online. Treat everything you read about it, including this page, as thinly sourced.

Upper Jones Valley is the smallest and least-documented of the three Forest Service facilities at Jones Valley, on the Pit River Arm — the eastern reach of Shasta Lake, approached over Bear Mountain Road from Redding rather than off Interstate 5. The practical consequence is a longer surface drive and none of the freeway noise that dominates Antlers and Bailey Cove. The cluster's real draw is the boat ramp about a mile away. Jones Valley has four ramps built for different lake levels and stays usable to roughly 210 feet of drawdown: four lanes to 50 feet below full pool, two lanes to 140, one lane to 210. Bailey Cove closes at 50 feet, Antlers at about 69, Hirz Bay at 95 to 97. Jones Valley and Centimudi are the two deepest-drawdown ramps on Shasta, so in a dry late summer this is one of the last places you can still put a boat in. Check the live lake level at the top of this page against those numbers. The concessionaire describes this campground as within walking distance of the water at full pool. As the lake drops, that walk grows, and no source quantifies it for Upper specifically. Two marinas serve the arm. Jones Valley Resort runs small boat rentals and houseboats about twenty minutes from Redding. Silverthorn Resort is the full-service one — houseboats, lakeside cabins, small boat rentals, moorage, a pro shop and a convenience store, with restrooms, a pumpout, water on the dock and parking for around 125 car-and-trailer rigs. The fire that shaped this hillside started nearby. The Jones Fire of October 1999 began on the Clikapudi Trail between Bear Mountain and Backbone Ridge, burned 26,200 acres and destroyed 954 structures including at least 128 homes. It was accidental and human-caused, and investigators ruled out a campfire. The Clikapudi Trail itself is a 7.5-mile loop with its trailhead 50 yards east of Lower Jones Valley — hiking, mountain biking and horses, no water on the trail, and severe summer heat. A correction worth carrying: the 2021 Salt Fire did not reach Jones Valley. It burned near Lakehead on the upper Sacramento Arm, off the Salt Creek exit on the opposite side of the lake. The Hidden Fire of June 2024 was local — 45 acres off Bear Mountain Road, contained in three days, no campground closures. If you are launching a boat, an invasive mussel-free certification is required and a forest order prohibits transporting golden, zebra and quagga mussels.

Questions people ask

Where these facts come from

• Shasta-Trinity National Forest — Upper Jones Valley Campground (closure status, 16 ft, no potable water) · checked 2026-08-31
• Shasta Recreation Company — 8 single sites, overflow, 25 ft back-in · checked 2026-08-31
• USFS — Jones Valley Public Boat Ramp, four ramps and drawdown limits · checked 2026-08-31
• USFS — Boat Ramps at Shasta Lake (ROG PDF), lake-wide drawdown table · checked 2026-08-31
• USFS — Clikapudi Trail · checked 2026-08-31
• Campendium — the single camper review, rig size and noise · checked 2026-08-31
• Recreation.gov — Lower Jones Valley, for the wildlife and food-storage guidance · 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